Jurassic World: The Most Dangerous Game
by godfreyraphael
Summary: "So you mean to tell me that aside from us and the mercenaries, there are drug cartels, dinosaur hunters, and secret genetic projects going on in this island?" "Pretty much." "Someone must really, really hate us." Owen and Claire are taken by a secretive group of people to Isla Sorna in the aftermath of the J-World incident where they learn everything's not as it seems.
1. Prologue: Welcome to Site B

A/N: So I finally decided to jump into the Jurassic World bandwagon. Let me just say that this idea of mine has been around for quite some time, but it's probably only because of Jurassic World that I finally managed to get it decent enough for a fanfic attempt, and now here it is. Yes, I've already watched Jurassic World and I think it is good! Of course it's not quite as good as the original, but then again what will be? But as a standalone story, Jurassic World is good, and it does leave references to the first three films here and there.

Now it's time to bring the Godfrey Raphael treatment to Jurassic Park. The title of this fic is based on The Most Dangerous Game, a story about a guy that gets shipwrecked and ends up on a private island whose owner hunts other people for sport. Kind of like what's going to happen here. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. Oh, and leave a review, a favourite or a follow if you liked it.

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Irene Pardew opened her eyes for the first time in a long time.

The last thing that she remembered was that the plane had suddenly come under attack from… something. Her brother had been at the controls of the plane, and he had told her to brace just before the plane was rocked by whatever had attacked them, and then she lost consciousness.

The last few days had not been kind to Irene. She and her brother Matthew were the children of Seamus Pardew, owner and head of Pardew Consumer Services and Protection Applications, one of the largest private security companies in the world. But that wasn't Irene and Matthew's only claim to fame. They were also the hosts of their own travel-show-with-a-twist, _Travelsick_. The concept of their show was simple: they went to the places that weren't usually high on ordinary people's lists of prime vacation spots. Their criteria was simple: what are the places that are actually quite nice to visit but would not be prime vacation spots because of circumstances such as notability and notoriety. In their show's first season, they'd gone to such places as South Africa, the Philippines, Uruguay, even the American Midwest, but what made their show really stick out was that sometimes they'd join in on activities that normally wouldn't even be considered as part of a regular tourist tour. They had climbed up the mountains of Kashmir and stayed with an Indian Army forward operating base. They had seen the sides of North Korea that the reclusive dictatorship was reluctant to show the West.

 _Travelsick_ 's first season had been quite a hit with the public, or at least that's what the ratings told the network. Obviously, a second season had to be made. But how else could they possibly top the adventures of season one? The siblings had spent some time thinking about that until Matthew finally hit upon the answer.

The opening of Jurassic World had been one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of mankind. It was, quite literally, twenty years in the making. Jurassic World, owned and operated by the massive multinational entity known as the Masrani Conglomerate, had been built on the foundations of Jurassic Park, the grandest dream of John Hammond, founder of International Genetics, or InGen for short. Hammond had lived through the suffering of World War Two and had come out of that with a determination to give the world happiness and keep giving it to the people. But he didn't have any idea how to do that until the 1980s, when genetics and genetic engineering was all the rage in the scientific community, and scientists were bandying about ideas and possibilities of the new technology. High up on the list of possibilities was cloning an extinct animal and bringing it back to life. Back then, scientists had managed to extract a large amount of DNA from a sample of quagga hide. The quagga had been an African grazing herbivore, similar to the gazelle and the antelope, that had become extinct in the 19th century. With the quagga's entire genome now available to scientists, people in these academic circles began thinking of the possibility of bringing the quagga, and other species like the passenger pigeon an the Iberian ibex, back to life.

But Hammond thought that the technology could be used to bring back animals that had been extinct for a far longer time, like dinosaurs. Everybody liked dinosaurs. Back then, that had been a universal truth. Museums were always earning millions on their dinosaur fossil exhibits, and that was with the animals already dead. How much would they pay to see a dinosaur alive? This was just one of the motivating factors why Hammond decided to establish InGen and establish a theme park which star attractions are all living and breathing dinosaurs. To that end, Hammond leased and eventually bought an island off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica by the name of Isla Nublar, and he began construction of his "biological preserve" there. By 1993, the park, now called Jurassic Park, was almost ready to open to the public. However, during a preliminary exhibition in front of noted palaeontologists, paloebotanists and mathematicians, the park's security systems failed. People died, and Hammond and InGen were forced to abandon Jurassic Park.

That would have been the end of the story for InGen and Jurassic Park, were it not for an InGen ship crashing into San Diego's harbour and unleashing a _Tyrannosaurus rex_ onto the unsuspecting city. Both the rex and the ship were eventually discovered to have come from Isla Sorna, another Costa Rican island that InGen had bought from the Central American country's government. Thus the general public became aware of InGen's technological breakthrough, and the fact that dinosaurs had been resurrected on a bunch of islands in the Pacific. But following the return of the rex to Sorna, the United Nations signed a declaration stating that Sorna was now both a natural preserve and a restricted area on land, air and sea.

Perhaps people would have just had to content themselves knowing that dinosaurs were alive on Sorna (InGen didn't reveal that dinosaurs were also present on Isla Nublar, which they somehow managed to retain possession of even though it was a large drain in their balance) but maybe it was because some kind of higher power was thinking that humanity would not have been ready yet for the concept of living dinosaurs in the present. In the end, Hammond wasn't able to realize his dream of bringing joy and happiness to the people of the world through his park and his dinosaurs, having died in 1997, just a few weeks after the "San Diego incident." But another man stood ready to make Hammond's dream a reality, and that man was Simon Masrani.

Masrani was the owner of one of the largest telecommunications companies in India, and International Genetics had been his first major corporate purchase, fulfilling the wish of his old family friend John Hammond. He saw the potential of Jurassic Park, and at great cost to his company Masrani invested resources into rebuilding Hammond's dream. Humans returned to Nublar for the first time in five years, recapturing the dinosaurs that had gone loose following the first park's failure and rebuilding at the southern part of the island, far from the disaster of the original park. Finally, in 2005, the park, now rebranded as Jurassic World, opened to the public for the first time. It was an unprecedented success. Humans could now look at dinosaurs, animals of an age far into the past, in the flesh. It was every child and child-at-heart's dream come true.

What everyone didn't know was that Masrani and InGen had secretly gone back to Isla Sorna and continued producing the majority of their "assets" there, quite possibly in violation of international law. Meanwhile, once people had gotten over the fact that dinosaurs now exist once among us, some of them eventually became curious. What did a dinosaur taste like? What kind of food would be a stegosaurus steak, or a triceratops T-bone? A few "enterprising individuals" eventually got wind of those gastronomically curious about dinosaurs, and they began these selling such products. However, as dinosaurs, or at least the dinosaur species that had been brought back to life by InGen, had been declared endangered species, hunting and killing the dinosaurs on Sorna for food and sport was illegal, and once the authorities had heard about this troubling new side of poaching, they cracked down hard on the industry. That didn't prevent people, especially the Chinese, from continuing to demand dinosaur meat for food, and soon unscrupulous Costa Ricans were now offering "hunting safaris" on Sorna so their customers could get their dinosaur meat "fresh from the source," as they said. It was quite a lucrative business. In the first half of 2015 alone, at least ten "hunts" had been caught by UN and Costa Rican authorities. There was no doubt that much more hunts had managed to slip past the authorities.

Matthew Pardew had thought it a good idea if season two of _Travelsick_ began with a dinosaur hunt on Isla Sorna. His sister Irene had reluctantly agreed to the idea, but the network officials were quite enthusiastic and approving of Matt's plan. So the two began sending feelers into the dinosaur meat trade, trying to establish themselves as two rich kids in search of both an adrenaline rush and a desire to hunt "the most famous animals to walk the earth," according to Matt's words. Eventually they finally made contact with a Costa Rican who said that he could bring them to "the best hunting ground on Sorna." The arrangements were made, cash changed hands, and soon they got the call to go to San Jose, capital of Costa Rica.

Matt, the more capable pilot of the two siblings, had flown their private plane to San Jose by himself, as agreed with the Costa Ricans. To maintain the pretense of a rich kids' idea of adventure, they had brought along two more people with them. One was a family friend who had been loyally serving Pardew since his honourable discharge from the United States Army, while the other was a Filipino tracker that the Pardews had befriended during their time in Manila and brought into the company so that he could provide for his family.

They had landed in San Jose without incident, and when their contact boarded the plane alone they thought that he alone would be guiding them to their "hunting ground" in Sorna. However, their contact then told them to fly to Managua, capital of neighboring Nicaragua, where they were to pick up the rest of the hunters. The rest of the hunters turned out to have been about twelve or so in number, and because of the nature of their work, they were quite concerned about being filmed, and they asked that the camera crew got off the plane for the rest of the journey to Sorna. Fortunately the Pardews had a Plan B: secret cameras in their clothes and bags.

The flight from Nicaragua to Sorna was uneventful, at least until they were finally flying over the landmass. Matt, who was flying the plane with the hunters' own pilot, was searching for a place to land, while the hunters' pilot had been wanting to show Matt the hunting grounds first. Irene had heard the two arguing in the cockpit, and she had gone over there to check on her brother. While Matt had been telling her the differences between him and the other pilot, something had hit the plane, and then whatever had hit them then began attacking them. It was the only way to describe what had happened: something took hold of the plane and began pecking at it with what sounded like a very tough beak. Whatever it had been wasn't able to penetrate the aircraft aluminium, thank goodness, but it had messed up the plane's controls badly, and Matt had been able to shout a warning to Irene to brace, and Irene had even been able to run for the last row of seats and buckle up before the plane made shuddering contact with the ground, and then Irene had blacked out after that.

Now Irene had regained consciousness, and she saw that she was still buckled into the last seat in the airplane, but the rest of the fuselage had vanished. In front of Irene was the great expanse of the crash site, with pieces of metal and glass scattered all over the place. Aside from the section of the plane that she was in, the largest piece of wreckage was just as large as a car door.

Irene felt black and blue, and merely moving was an exercise in tolerating pain. Eventually she managed to unbuckle her seat belt, and Irene got off the seat and out of the wreck. There was little left resembling an airplane except from the bit of wreckage that she had just come from. It was as if the rest of the plane had simply disintegrated. Irene tried looking for other survivors of the crash, including her brother Matt, but she could no bodies, no survivors, nothing.

Being the lone survivor of a plane crash wasn't the least of Irene Pardew's worries, though. Irene was the lone survivor of a plane crash on a dinosaur island.

And there was more bad news in store for her. Irene had heard rumors and talk between the hunters that they had picked up in Nicaragua that the place where they were supposed to do their "hunting trip" was what the locals called "carnivore country." She could only assume that they called it that because it was where most of the carnivorous dinosaurs produced by InGen roamed. If she couldn't find any sort of shelter soon, Irene could end up becoming dinosaur food. A bit of her realized the irony, but Irene herself was busy trying to survive to appreciate the irony of the situation: she had gone to Sorna to hunt dinosaurs, and now she was about to become the one hunted.

Right on cue, Irene felt the earth shaking slightly. A second later, it was followed by a slightly stronger shaking, which was now accompanied by a soft booming noise. The shaking ground and booming noise got stronger and louder by the second, and Irene spun around, looking for a potential hiding spot amongst the debris of the crash site, but she couldn't find anything except the bit of fuselage where she had just come from. Out of options, Irene ducked back into the intact tail section, going for the cargo hold below instead of climbing up to the passenger cabin. She slid herself into the deepest and darkest corner of the cargo hold, and then she stopped once she could go no further. Irene waited as the shaking of the ground got even stronger, and then suddenly, she could finally see what was making all the shaking and booming.

It was a motherfucking _T. rex_ , one of the largest land predators to ever walk the earth. It wasn't the largest of carnivorous dinosaurs, but it was certainly one of the most well-known and most popular species. InGen had made a calculated risk when they decided to clone the species for Jurassic Park and later on Jurassic World, and it had exceeded all expectations.

Now one such animal was just a few hundred yards from Irene. She was praying and hoping against hope that the tyrannosaur would at most not be curious about the crash site and just ignore this sudden new arrival in its territory.

The rex sniffed the air tentatively. Its small arms waved in the air. And then it began walking towards the tail of the fuselage, the part where Irene had taken refuge. Every step of the rex shook the very earth itself, and Irene had to bite her lip to keep from screaming in sheer terror. She heard the rex sniffing the broken remains of the jet, nudging it and generally trying to determine if it was a rival out to claim its territory. Then the rex roared, a deep primeval bellow that had never before been heard by human ears. Irene trembled in fear as she pressed her hands to her ears and bit her tongue to keep her own scream from escaping her lips.

The rex began to examine Irene's hiding place more closely. It bent its head down and sniffed at the interior of the plane. _Thank God its head is so big_ , she thought as the dinosaur's jaw almost touched the muddy ground. _Good thing I went down here instead of up there. It would have seen me already_. The rex was breathing a bit faster now, like a hound that had caught the scent of the hunted wolf. And at that moment Irene realized with horror that the rex could smell her. The rex was no longer looking for its prey, it had found it, and now it was just waiting for her to make a mistake and reveal herself.

The rex bellowed right into the cargo hold. Irene clapped her hands over her ears once again and bit her tongue so hard it began to bleed. She fought the urge to spit the mix of blood and saliva in her mouth and instead swallowed the coppery-like mixture. The rex then began nudging the wreckage once again, but this time with more purpose. Irene knew that she had only a little time left before the rex finally got her and ate her.

Then Irene thought she heard a groaning sound. At first, she thought that it was just her imagination or her ears tricking her into thinking that the tyrannosaur's breathing sounded like groaning. Then she heard it again, and this time she was sure it was a man groaning, and the rex stopped nudging the fuselage. Irene heard the groaning once more, and the tyrannosaur turned away from the fuselage to look for the source of the noise. From her point of view Irene saw that it was one of the hunters that they had picked up in Nicaragua that was making the groaning. How he had managed to escape her noticed earlier she did not know, but now she wished that the man had just died in the crash itself.

The rex walked over to the hunter's body and began sniffing it. Then, it began nudging the man with its head. _Don't move_ , Irene thought. _Don't move, you son of a bitch_. But she couldn't voice her thoughts out loud, and therefore she was powerless to prevent what happened next, and she could only watch the coming carnage.

The hunter finally stirred awake. The tyrannosaur stopped nudging the animal that had suddenly appeared in its territory and began staring at it. The hunter opened his eyes, saw the dinosaur that stood over him, and screamed. At that same moment, the rex brought down its head and clamped the hunter in its jaws. The man screamed even more as he was lifted up into the air in the tyrannosaur's jaws. Then the rex bit down. One shake of its head was all it needed. The hunter's screaming turned into a strangled gurgle, and then the rex lowered his body to ground and began to devour it. Irene had to turn away. The sounds of flesh being torn and bones breaking were already giving her vivid mental images. She didn't have to see the real thing herself, lest she throw up and give the rex one more clue on where she was hiding.

It was over in just a few minutes. The rex's jaws were coated with blood, having just finished its most recent meal. The dinosaur lifted its head, roared softly as it felt its hunger being satiated, and then it walked back to where Irene had been hiding and resumed its search for her. Irene cursed herself silently for not having made a break for it while the rex was busy eating the poor hunter. But then she realized that the rex could still see her if she had tried to escape, and there was no doubt in her mind that she would have ended up as dino chow just like the hunter if she had done that.

But something felt wrong about the whole thing to Irene. That kind of persistence from a predator, especially an apex predator that had literally fed just minutes ago, was unnatural. But then again, InGen had never claimed that they created real, authentic dinosaurs. Predators like the _Tyrannosaurus rex_ should have moved on once it was finished eating its most recent kill. Then again, a human was a puny thing compared to the _T. rex_. Perhaps one guy just wasn't enough to fill its belly up.

Now all Irene could hope for was that the rex finally grew tired of waiting for her to reveal herself and left her alone. But as she thought that, she also thought that maybe the rex was going hungry right now, having just eaten one puny human. The longer she waited, the more the rex might want to eat her.

Then Irene heard the unmistakable hiss of a flare being ignited. She saw a faint red glow to the tyrannosaur's right side, which the dinosaur also noticed. It turned away from Irene's hiding place and bellowed at this new bright thing that had suddenly entered its territory.

Once the rex had moved its body away from the fuselage, Irene could see that it was her brother Matt—thank God he survived!—who was holding the flare. The rex roared at him once again and began advancing towards him. Irene wanted so bad to shout at her younger brother to throw the flare away, but she managed to catch herself just in time. Instead she could only mutter the words as tears flowed from her eyes, helpless to watch her brother stand up to one of the biggest predators of all time.

The rex roared at Matt once again and continued walking towards him. To his credit Matt stood his ground for as long as possible and then he threw the flare away from him, towards a small grove of trees. The rex's head followed the flare as it landed amongst the trees, and it began to head towards the grove, completely ignoring the potential prey item that had just been holding the flare moments ago.

Matt waited until he was out of the rex's line of sight before heading for the wreckage. Irene slid out of her hiding place as he drew near, and then the two of them embraced each other. "Oh, thank God you're alive, Matt," Irene said. "I thought I was the only one that made it."

"Me too, Irene, me too," Matt replied. "Thank God you made it too. Are you okay? Any cuts, injuries, that kind of thing?"

"I'm fine, Matty, just fine," Irene said. Matty had been her pet name for her younger brother. Matt didn't like it, but as the elder sibling Irene could use it whenever she wanted. "Dear God, Matt, that was either the best thing or the craziest thing that I have ever seen you do. Even crazier than when you took up a gun and helped the Indians fight off those Pakistanis in Kashmir."

"I know, right?" Matt replied. "Nick and Justin also made it through, thank God, and they helped me set up the thing for the rex." Nick and Justin were the other Pardew personnel that they had brought with them for the "dinosaur hunting episode."

"Set up the thing? What are you talking about? What did you put in that grove for the _T. rex_?"

"The other pilot didn't make it. Nick and I dragged him over to the grove, where we'd thought he'd make a nice distraction."

"Yeah, okay, but what's with the guns on your back?"

"We're stuck on an island full of dinosaurs, Irene. How else are we gonna survive and make it back to the rest of the world?"

"Okay," Irene said, nodding her head. "Where are Nick and Justin, though? I haven't seen them."

"They're in the forest over there," Matt replied, pointing in the general direction where he had last saw the two other survivors.

"No shit, Sherlock," Irene muttered. She then took the opportunity to punch Matt in the arm. "What was that for!?" he demanded.

"You could have killed yourself with that crazy stunt of yours!" Irene replied. "What if the rex had followed you instead of the flare?"

"Well, then it would have been game over for me."

"Everything's a game for you."

"But it didn't chase me, Irene. That's what matters."

"Yeah, I guess so." And then she punched Matt once again. "It's still a stupid plan, stupid," she said.

"I guess I deserved that one," Matt replied. "Okay, do you still need to get anything from the plane? Our pal Rexy's just about finished with the other pilot by now, and I wouldn't want to be around when she's looking for more food."

"Okay, let me just get my bag." Irene then climbed up to the passenger cabin, but as she did that, Matt said, "Irene, are you okay? There's blood on your leg. And your bottom as well."

"What?" Irene looked down and saw that a few drops of dark red blood had gone down her left leg and into her sock. She then reached behind her and touched the seat of her shorts. Her fingers came away smeared in blood.

"Oh, crap," she muttered. Aunt Flo had decided to come on the absolute worst moment of Irene Pardew's life.

Matt saw Irene disappear into the inner reaches of the fuselage. When she popped back out she had tied her shirt around her waist, and she had her pack with her. "Come on then, Matt, let's go," she said. "You're the one who said you didn't want to be here when Rexy comes back, right?"

Matt and Irene then began running away from the crash site and for the forest, and they melted into the treeline just as the tyrannosaur roared at the heavens once again.

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A/N: Quite possibly my second-longest chapter ever written! If you stuck around long enough to get to the end, then thanks! Leave a review, a favourite or a follow if you liked it or not. Constructive criticism is welcome as well!


	2. Chilean Sea Bass

The establishment of Jurassic World had been a literal godsend both for Costa Rica in general and the seaside town of Puntarenas in particular. Before the opening of Jurassic World, Puntarenas had been just like any other small seaside town in the world: the people made their living mostly through fishing, the government officials came by once a year if at all, and life was basically quiet and easy. That had all changed when the Masrani Corporation arrived at the town and began construction of a large port easily capable of handling five cruise ships at the same time. At first the townspeople thought the people building the port mad. Who would ever come to tiny Puntarenas in cruise ships?, they asked themselves. Their curiosity was brought even higher when Masrani also began improving the town's tiny dirt airstrip into a small yet efficient airport that could give municipal airports in the United States a run for their money. The Western companies must be planning or doing something big if it required giving Puntarenas both a port and an airport, the townspeople thought.

Then the Masrani Corporation unveiled Jurassic World, an island resort, park and biological preserve on one of Costa Rica's Pacific islands, Isla Nublar. Within just days, Puntarenas had become the second-most visited city in Costa Rica, just after the capital San Jose itself. Thousands of people made the flight from San Jose to Puntarenas and then board the ships and ferries that would take them to Jurassic World. At first, the tourists saw Puntarenas as just a stopping point between the mainland and Jurassic World itself, but then someone thought of establishing a tour of the town. It was a great success, and as time went on people were telling other people that their Jurassic World experience would not be complete without having gone on a tour of Puntarenas at least once.

That was the way of life for Puntarenas for the next ten years.

Today, things were a bit different. People were still in Puntarenas, but they weren't going anywhere. There were no ships going to Isla Nublar or Jurassic World, but some ships were still coming in from the island. There were no flights to or from the town's airport—yet. While travel in and out of Puntarenas had not exactly been restricted, the circumstances leading up to this unfortunate series of events had been so new to the authorities that they didn't have any idea how to deal with it except keep all of the witnesses in one place.

Jurassic World had been in the process of preparing a new dinosaur for the park. Whereas their first dinosaurs were species that were well-known to the public, this new attraction, as they called it, was a genetically-made hybrid. Only the name of the new dinosaur had been revealed by the park in its press packets: _Indominus rex_. An as-yet-unknown series of events had led to the _Indominus_ breaking out of its holding paddock and going on a rampage throughout the park, resulting in the evacuation of the over twenty thousand people on the island at the time. While initial eyewitness statements were quite confusing and sometimes contradictory, one of the common things in their accounts was that apparently the _Indominus_ had gotten into a fight with the park's main attraction, a _Tyrannosaurus rex_. The fight lasted for some time before the _Indominus_ was apparently attacked by the mosasaur and brought down to the prehistoric sea monster's reservoir.

The world was waiting expectantly for a statement from either the park's management or maybe even the owner of the park himself, Simon Masrani, but both entities were currently unavailable for comment. There were some rumors though that Masrani himself had been either involved or caught up in one of the operations to contain the hybrid dinosaur and had died as a result. Masrani's estate was neither confirming nor denying the rumors, but to some the mere fact that they were not confirming or denying the rumors was proof itself that Simon Masrani, the eighth richest man in the world, was now dead.

Unknown to the press, there were two people who could have told them the entirety of the events that had occurred in Jurassic World on that fateful day that were currently in Puntarenas. But even if they found out about them, they wouldn't be able to find them in the airport hangars where the survivors of the "Jurassic World incident" were currently being housed, as they had gone away for the purpose of avoiding the press in particular and the public in general.

Puntarenas' basic layout was similar to other towns in countries that had once been occupied by the Spanish empire. There was a church and a plaza in the middle of town facing the house of the governor's representative in the town. There were a number of houses and businesses that had sprung up around the plaza in the present day, and one of those businesses was a cantina. It was a slow day for that particular cantina. Most of the waiters and waitresses were seated in the tables usually reserved for customers, talking about how uneventful the usually-busy lunch hour had become. There was a television turned on in the background, tuned to a news channel that was talking about the Jurassic World incident in Spanish. The newscasters were talking about the events surrounding the Jurassic World incident, and what it could mean for the future of Costa Rica. But there was a radio playing that was louder than the television, and it was currently playing Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady." Definitely not the kind of cantina music one would expect.

There were only two people in the cantina who were clearly customers, a man and a woman. The woman, who seemed to have more authority between the two, had bright orange hair, a sight that the locals had seen only rarely. Meanwhile, the man looked more like the average foreigner, with short black hair and a rough beard. The two of them had been talking in English for some time, but that had been a few minutes ago, and now they had gone silent, and kept looking at the kitchen, the television, the outside of the cantina, anywhere but at each other. The cantina waiters sensed that there was some kind of awkwardness going on between the two. It was the only explanation they could come up with.

A waiter finally came out of the cantina's kitchen, carrying a single plate. He walked over to where the man and woman were seated—they didn't appear to be a couple—and laid the plate on the table. "Order complete," he said in heavily-accented English.

Claire Dearing, the orange-haired woman, looked at the plate before her and then at the waiter. She was the head of operations of Jurassic World and therefore was quite knowledgeable about the truth behind the Jurassic World incident, but that was also the reason why she was in this cantina and not in the hangars with the other survivors. And while she admitted that she was not a fluent Spanish speaker, she did know that _uno_ meant one and _dos_ meant two. And she clearly remembered ordering for two. "This is just for one person," she told the waiter. " _Uno plato_."

"All fish have," the waiter replied, and then he turned around and went back to his place in the counter and in front of the television.

"I think what he meant to say was that that was all the fish that they had," said Owen Grady, the man who was seated across the table from Claire. Technically, he was part of InGen and not Jurassic World, but he was also intimately connected with the events of the Jurassic World incident. But before he was an employee of InGen, he had been in the United States Navy and had even spent time as a SEAL, the Navy's special forces branch. Publicly, his role within Jurassic World was a trade secret, but some of the higher-ranking Jurassic World personnel knew that Grady's job was to train velociraptors, or at least do something quite close to training them. Owen himself had said that he was not training the raptors, but rather he had a sort of bond with them that allowed him to get much closer to these dinosaurs than other people. The secretive nature of his work had also made him reluctant to discuss the Jurassic World incident, and that was before non-disclosure agreements had even been brought up.

Claire and Owen were quite the odd couple. They weren't lovers, but they certainly were more than just friends, kind of stuck between two levels. Perhaps they didn't want to put a label on their relationship just yet. Perhaps they weren't yet ready to make the leap of faith. Whatever the case, there _was_ something between them, and people could see it and feel it.

Claire sighed and looked at the food on the plate. "I don't think that's Chilean sea bass," she said.

"Well, what did you expect?" Owen said in reply. "Costa Rica is a thousand, two thousand miles away from Chile. That fish on your plate's probably just some fish the locals caught off the coast."

"Then why do they have a sign that says 'House Specialty: Chilean Sea Bass'?"

"I don't know, Claire. Maybe it _is_ their house specialty, and we just arrived on an off day. Come on. Give it a try."

Claire reached out and speared a piece of fish with a fork. She brought the fish to her mouth and began to chew. "Bleurgh," she said, making a face. "It's like cardboard."

"Really?" Owen took his fork, got a piece of fish with it, and tasted it himself. "Hmm," he muttered. "It tastes like that Biosyn trout that they got in Idaho," he told Claire.

"Biosyn trout?"

"Yeah, back in 1989 or something like that, Biosyn released some genetically-modified trout in Idaho's rivers with the approval of their Department of Game and Sport. The trout was pale; you could see it in the river, but that meant they sunburned easily. Also, people said these trout were tasteless, as in literally it didn't taste like anything."

"Huh," Claire muttered. "All I remember about Biosyn is that they tried to buy InGen when they went Chapter 11." She stuck another piece of fish into her mouth before continuing. "Now I'm glad that they gave us only one fish. I don't think the two of us would've been able to eat all that fish."

"True that."

Once again, the two of them went silent, nibbling on the "Chilean sea bass" whenever they felt like it. Finally, Owen spoke up, and he asked, "Something troubling you?"

"I'm just thinking about what comes next," Claire replied. "You know, J-World's closed; the dinosaurs have escaped. I don't know if we'll ever go back there again." J-World was the employees' nickname for Jurassic World.

"Don't beat yourself too much about it," Owen said. "Yeah, J-World's closed, but that doesn't mean it's gonna be closed forever. Jurassic World is like Masrani's crown jewel; they won't just let it rot like the old park. How many people were there just yesterday? Twenty thousand, something like that?" Claire nodded her head in assent. "And that's already with the 'people look at a _Stegosaurus_ like it's an elephant' stuff that made you go ahead with the _Indominus_. Like I said, dinosaurs are wow enough. People will still come back looking at them even if they've seen them before already. Also, zoos suffer breakouts all the time. Do they get closed just because a tiger or a lion got out of its cage? No; they just recapture whatever escaped and then reopen. The only really dangerous animals loose on Nublar right now are Blue and Rexy. The pterosaurs and the _Dimorphodons_ were all brought back to the containment aviary after we finally took care of them. Once you get the rex and Blue rounded up and back in their paddocks, it's just a matter of rebuilding Main Street, and then J-World's probably in business. And, even if Masrani decides not to reopen Nublar, there's still Europe and Japan."

Following the massive success of Jurassic World, Masrani had announced that they were going to build at least two more parks nearer to the European and Asian markets. Jurassic World Japan had been opened first, built on an uninhabited island between the Marianas and Iwo Jima, to cater to the rapidly growing East Asian market, particularly the Chinese. Meanwhile, Jurassic World Europe had been opened just about a year ago on an island that had previously been subject to a dispute between Portugal and Cape Verde, with the former claiming that it was part of the Azores, and the latter stating that the island was part of its archipelago. Masrani had solved that dispute singlehandedly by buying the island and building Jurassic World Europe on it.

"Yeah, I suppose if Nublar doesn't reopen, there is still Sao Conrado and Nashi-shima," Claire said, referring to the parks by the names of the islands they had been built on.

Owen sighed. "You know, Claire, this scene is so perfect," he said. "You know, just you and me talking over some food about life and plans, calling each other 'Owen' and 'Claire' instead of 'Mr. Grady' and 'Ms. Dearing.' We make a good couple, don't we? Why didn't it work out between us?"

Claire cracked a smile at that. "Probably because we only tried to become a couple after we got drunk that one time and had sex," she said.

"What's wrong with that?" Owen replied. "I mean, isn't that what happens in chick flicks and rom-coms?" Indeed, it was only just about a year ago that Claire, then still just one of the candidates to being J-World's head of operations, and Owen, still reeling from the fact that he was being asked to train actual and living velociraptors, had first met in a bar just a short walk from the cantina where they were presently eating. They had gotten drunk, one thing led to another, and they had woken up to find themselves in each other's arms. They had tried hard to forget about that night, but they just couldn't, so they decided to try for a real relationship. Unfortunately their first date had ended in disaster, with the two committing various faux pas that ended up with them deciding not to further pursue the matter. However, the events of the last day seemed to have conspired to bring them together.

"Maybe that's because those are movies, and this is real life," Claire retorted with a smile. "But then again, you've been spending a lot of time with your raptors that you probably don't know the difference between the two, Lafayette."

Owen almost did a double take. "Whoa, now, what's with using my middle name now, Nikita?" he asked. "And what's my middle name got to do with me not knowing the difference between movies and real life?"

"Nothing, really," Claire said. "I just find it funny that you think Lafayette is an embarrassing middle name. At least the famous person who had the same name was also a guy. When I was born, the only famous person named Nikita was Khrushchev, and _La Femme Nikita_ wasn't around yet."

"I thought you liked it when I called you Nikita back when we had sex."

"Well, you liked it when _I_ called _you_ Lafayette."

"What's not to like about the guy? He's French, he wasn't a surrender monkey, and he even fought for America in the Revolution! Anyway, how did we end up talking about our middle names?"

"I don't know, but I will admit I did start it," Claire said.

Owen looked at the plate of "Chilean" sea bass. It was still half-full, with about ten fillet slices left on the plate. At the rate they were going, there was probably going to be some leftovers for dinner. "Let me ask you a serious question, Claire," he said.

"Go ahead."

"If Masrani hadn't decided to go for the hybrid dinosaur, what would you have made in its place?"

"Why would you ask me that?"

"Just genuinely curious."

Claire put down her fork and leaned forward. "If the _Indominus_ hadn't been approved, I think we would have probably gone for a _Titanoboa_ or a _Megalania_ ," she said. "I know, they're not dinosaurs, but the thinking back then was that maybe the dinosaurs weren't enough to pull people in anymore. Maybe we needed something new. You do know about the planned Pleistocene Park in the Aleutians, right?"

"You know what, Claire? I think I would have preferred the _Titanoboa_ or the _Megalania_ to the _Indominus_ ," Owen said.

At that moment Owen and Claire noticed that two men were now walking towards them. The man bringing up the rear was beefy and bald and basically had the generic look of a bodyguard. The man walking up to them, meanwhile, got their attention. His face was bright red—probably more the result of a poorly-applied fake tan than any underlying medical condition. He had crazy curly brown hair that made him look like the guy from _Ancient Aliens_ , and he also had on a tacky brown suit like the kind that the _Ancient Aliens_ guy liked to wear. He even had a lapel pin version of the Mayan bird statue that the _Ancient Aliens_ show claimed was proof that extraterrestrials had taught the Mayans the secret of flight.

"Are you Claire Dearing and Owen Grady?" he asked them.

"Well, you found us," Owen replied. "Who are you?"

"Giannis Katsouranis," the man replied, extending his hand, which held a pair of calling cards. "I'm with Pardew Consumer Services and Protection Applications."

"Hang on a minute," Owen said. "Did you say you were from Pardew?"

"Yes, I did," Katsouranis replied. "I'm the head of the Practical Protection Applications division; basically Pardew's private security arm. There is a certain matter that we have to discuss in private."

"Why us, Mr. Katsouranis?" Claire asked. "What makes us more important to whatever you want to discuss instead of any other person in Costa Rica?"

"Let's just say that you, Ms. Dearing, know the place quite well, and Mr. Grady here knows the animals that live there."

It took them a moment to realize what Katsouranis was talking about. "Does this have anything to do with what happened at Isla Nublar?" Owen asked.

"It's not Nublar, actually," Katsouranis replied. "It is one of InGen's islands, but it's not the one with the park."

"Isla Sorna?" Claire asked.

"Indeed," Katsouranis said with a nod of his head. "And that's all I can discuss with you in public. If you'd like, we can continue this conversation in my car."

"Wait a minute, Mr. Katsouranis," Claire said, standing up from her seat. "Jurassic World may be closed right now, but we're still employees of Masrani and InGen. And the last time I looked, Pardew wasn't one of Masrani's companies, and also not the other way around."

"Yes, Ms. Dearing, you're right about that, but something has happened that involves all of our respective employers, and I think we'll all have to work together and with each other for this. Please, let's continue this in my car."

"He's tenacious, isn't he?" Owen asked Claire as the two men from Pardew began walking back to their SUV.

"I've met corporate types like him before," Claire replied. "You give them an objective, and they'll achieve it by hook or by crook, come hell or high water. Also, I haven't heard of any company named Pardew before."

"I have," Owen said. "They're private security. I've seen them before, back when I was still in the Navy. They're in the usual places: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. And that's got me worried. Hoskins wanted to use the raptors as weapons for the military. What if Pardew's trying to do the same, even beat InGen in its own game?"

"Well, we won't know just standing here and talking about it," Claire said. "We _have_ to come with him."

"Did we even have a choice?"

"I think we were in it as soon as he talked to us," Claire replied. "I just hope we can get out as easily."

"Unless it's one of those 'once you're in, you can never be out' type of things," Owen quipped as he laid a ten-dollar bill on the table beside the plate of "Chilean" sea bass, and then he and Claire walked over to Katsouranis' SUV and got in.


	3. The Fastest Ship In Existence

As Claire and Owen got into the SUV, Katsouranis picked up an iPad and began thumbing through the data that was on it. "You're Claire Nikita Dearing, I assume," he said to Claire. Born on March 2, 1981 in Los Angeles to Gary and Daniella Dearing; graduated from Stanford with a degree in business administration and management then hired by Masrani Global in '07 and working through the ranks before finally becoming head of operations of Jurassic World in December 2014. And you," he said to Owen, "you're quite probably Owen Lafayette Grady, and you were born on June 21, 1979 in Minnesota to Maximilian and Wendy Grady, and graduated from Purdue with a degree in zoology. Then you enlisted in the US Navy and became part of their animal training programs. First you trained dolphins and then at some point in your time in the Navy you were recruited into the SEALs. Then you received an honourable discharge and went back to Minnesota as a fowler for their Parks and Recreation Department before being recruited into InGen's private security division. On your official file you're listed as a special handler, which I can only assume is about training dinosaurs or something like that."

"How did you know this much information about us?" Claire asked.

"I did a little research on my own," Katsouranis said. "It helps to know the people I'm going to be working with in the next few days. Look, I'm not going to sugar-coat this or anything," he added. "We need your help. A plane of ours has crashed on Isla Sorna. We believe there may be survivors, but we have no idea on what to expect there."

"What makes you think that we can help you out with that?" Owen asked. "We haven't been to Sorna in a very long time. The last time I was there was six months ago, when we transferred juveniles from there to Nublar. Also, why don't you just ask for help from the InGen people on Sorna itself?"

"We've done that already," Katsouranis said. "But your people are busy trying to get a handle on things after the incident in Jurassic World that they told us they didn't have the personnel to spare. However, they did tell us that there may be some people from Nublar that made it back to Costa Rica who might be able to help us. We looked around, and we found you two."

"Yes, we get that," Claire said, "but why us?"

"Well, Mr. Grady will be able to help us know what to expect down there, and you, Ms. Dearing, we've found out that you've got quite a bit more history with Sorna than you're saying you are."

"What are you talking about?"

"You have an aunt, Dr. Victoria Everett, who was a member of the original Jurassic Park's genetics staff alongside Drs. Henry Wu and Laura Sorkin. After the original park was closed down, Dr. Everett moved to Australia to study the genetics of the local fauna there, and she even participated in a search for a megalania. Unfortunately she died in a plane crash there in 2012. We don't know much about Dr. Everett's life during her years with InGen, but we have found out that she took you with her to Isla Sorna, or Site B as it was called then."

Claire was taken aback by what Katsouranis had just revealed about her aunt. She hadn't been that close with her Aunt Vicky—kind of like her current relationship with her nephews Zach and Gray—but she did remember her parents asking Aunt Vicky to take her to where she was working, which had turned out to be Site B. Nothing quite as exciting as dinosaurs escaping had happened there when she had been there, and because of that she didn't think that it was noteworthy enough to mention.

"You've been to Site B?" Owen asked her. "I mean, the original park's Site B? Why didn't you tell anyone about it? What was it like?"

"It didn't seem important at the time," Claire replied. "Also, what's there to talk about? Site B back then was like the Hammond Lab today: they're all about making dinosaurs."

"I think you now have an idea why we need you," Katsouranis said. "You'll tell us the kind of dinosaurs we're to expect," he said to Owen, "and you'll guide us around the island itself," he told Claire.

"Really?" Claire didn't seem convinced, and basing on his body language, so did Owen. "Sounds like you're just trying to find reasons to get us there," she told Katsouranis.

"Well, to be honest, you're right," Katsouranis said. "We already have someone who can really help us, but he asked for you two specifically to help him help us out."

"Do we happen to know this guy?" Claire asked.

"I have a feeling that you might." Katsouranis turned around and handed the two an iPad showing a video clip. "That video shows the flight path of our plane in the moments before it crashed on Sorna," he said. "You can see that they're flying high and straight until just as they reach the coast of Sorna. After that, they made a rapid descent and began flying some irregular loops over the northern part of the island." The video played some kind of graphical representation of what Katsouranis had just said, with the plane tracing out a flight path from Managua, Nicaragua to Isla Sorna, and then as the plane descended, the line behind the plane figure turned from dark blue to light green, and the plane made some looping circuits over the northern part of the island. This went on for a few seconds before the plane suddenly disappeared.

"I'm sorry to say this, man, but I don't think you're going to get much help from us," Owen said. "You said that your plane crashed in northern Sorna, right? Well, we haven't been there at all. It's like a restricted zone even for InGen and J-World employees like us."

"I'm afraid there isn't much the two of you can do about it," Katsouranis said. "Our main contact with InGen is very insistent that you two come with us for this."

"Who's onboard that plane, anyway?" Claire asked. "I mean, we know that Sorna is an island full of dinosaurs and all, but you seem to really want to get there and save whoever was on the plane."

Katsouranis turned to face them and said, in a grave voice, "What follows should never leave the confines of this vehicle. Do you by any chance know Irene and Matthew Pardew?"

"Yeah, I do," Owen replied. Claire turned to look at him, and he said, "They've got this travel show with a twist called _Travelsick_. It's a good show, actually. Not that you would know about it, what with you being stuck in your books and ledgers and stuff." That earned him an elbow to the gut from Claire.

"Wait a minute," Owen said to Katsouranis. "You mean to tell us that Irene and Matthew Pardew are part of Pardew Applications?"

"They're the children of Seamus Pardew," Katsouranis confirmed. "All we know is that their show got the go-ahead for a second season, and it seems as if they've thought that Isla Sorna would be a great season opener. I can't blame them, though. It is pretty hard to top fighting off Pakistanis with the Indian Army in Kashmir."

Katsouranis removed his shades and continued. "Look, I'm not going to blame you for being quite suspicious, but sometimes things like these do happen. I don't think you know this, but Pardew was asked by the Costa Rican government to provide additional security as election season approached. That was way back in February of last year, I believe. The newly elected government then decided that keeping us around is a worthwhile investment, and so that's why there're still Pardew personnel here in Costa Rica. The people don't like it one bit. They've been wanting us out of the country ever since the elections were over, but since the government pays us good money, we don't exactly want to get kicked out. So we can't really show any signs of weakness, and so Irene and Matt's disappearance is being kept under wraps. We need to get this wrapped up, and to get them back in the real world ASAP. And also we need to get to them before the dinosaurs, your dinosaurs, do."

The SUV slid to a halt before a checkpoint. As the driver talked to the guards manning the checkpoint, Owen happened to glance out of the car, and he noticed something odd. "We're at the port," he said. "This is the port of Puntarenas. What are we doing here in the port?" Indeed, there was a large sign beside the checkpoint welcoming them, in Spanish and English, to the Port of Puntarenas.

"The port?" Claire parroted. "Mr. Katsouranis, what are we doing here at the port?"

"Time is of the essence, Ms. Dearing," the man from Pardew replied. "Matthew and Irene have been missing for more than 24 hours now. 25 hours, 18 minutes and 37 seconds, to be exact," he added while looking at his watch. "They're adventurers, I know. They take after their old man, but Sorna is a dinosaur preserve. We're really keen on getting them out of there before the dinosaurs do."

The SUV was finally allowed to enter the port. They drove past numerous stalls and people selling their wares, which most often meant their day's catch. They even passed by a group of men carrying a large fish on their shoulders, a fish that was easily enough to feed an infant mosasaur, before they made a right turn and arrived in front of another checkpoint. This time though they didn't stop, as the guards apparently recognized the vehicle and its occupants to let it through with a wave of a hand and a nod of the head. Once they were in, the guards quickly slid the gates closed once again.

"Don't be too impressed by our operation," Katsouranis told the two Jurassic World people. "This is just the people we need to rescue our boss's kids."

This gated part of the port was quite different from the one that they had just passed through. The area now resembled an army barracks, with tents and prefabricated buildings arranged in neat rows for both the men and the officers or commanders or whatever private military contractors called their higher-ups. There was a small but well-supplied motor pool beside the tents, but easily the most noticeable object within the "camp" was the cargo ship docked just beside the "camp." Owen couldn't help but think: if this was the amount of manpower that Pardew was willing to commit to a simple search-and-rescue operation, how much more could they commit to an actual warzone?

The driver brought the SUV to the pier where the cargo ship was docked. Once the vehicle was stopped, Katsouranis got out, removed his suit jacket and hung it over his right shoulder. Owen and Claire followed him out of the vehicle, and they both couldn't help but stare up at the ship. "Is she yours?" Owen asked.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Katsouranis replied. "She's the _Jewel of Esfahan_. Seamus Pardew himself bought her from an Indian breaker's yard for a pittance, and then he had some friends in Russia give her a complete makeover. Of course, that was before that thing in Crimea and Ukraine, so some of the money that he gave might have been used to fund Putin's adventure in the Black Sea… Anyway, most of her new tricks are a company secret, but I can tell you that her hull's been reinforced to battleship-grade armor, the better to help her both to withstand attacks and break through ice sheets if need be."

"What's with the flag of Iran flying on her stern?" Owen pointed to the Iranian flag flying over the _Jewel of Esfahan_ 's stern flagstaff.

"At first, that was just for a bit of fun. Then we needed to get into some… sensitive areas quickly and quietly, and it was then that we found out that no one is suspicious that an Iranian-flagged vessel could actually be providing cover for American military operators."

Katsouranis walked up to the stairs leading up to the ship's decks. There was a man wearing combat webbing over civilian clothes and a black cap over his head waiting for them. He was packing what looked like an assault rifle with the biggest barrel Owen had ever seen. The barrel looked too big even for the biggest assault rifle calibre, which meant it was probably a semi-automatic shotgun. The man with the semi-auto shotgun saluted Katsouranis, who returned the salute and said, "How goes the ship, Dick?"

"She's ready to go, Gian," the man replied. "We're just waiting for the other people from InGen before casting off."

"Here they are." Katsouranis waved his hand at Claire and Owen. "Claire Dearing and Owen Grady, this is Dick Hamada. I wouldn't say that he's the head of Pardew Applications' search and rescue operations, but he is pretty high up in the ranks."

"Hamada?" Claire asked as they shook hands. "Do you by any chance have a brother working in Jurassic World?"

"Cousin, actually," Dick Hamada replied. "I know people have told us that we look so much alike that we must be brothers, but unfortunately for them, Katashi and I are just cousins."

"Well, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell this to you, but your cousin didn't make it out of Jurassic World. He was, uh, killed in action while trying to recapture one of our escaped assets—er, dinosaurs."

"I did have some thoughts on the matter," Dick said. "It is part of the job, though. You never know which day's going to be your last. Come on aboard! It's a four-hour trip to Sorna, and we want to get there while there's still some light. We'll need all the light that we can get."

"Four hours?" Owen asked as their little group began climbing the stairs. "That's impossible. Sorna's at least two hundred miles away from Puntarenas. You can't get there in just four hours unless your ship can get up to sixty knots. Can it?" Owen trailed off as he realized just what exactly the Pardew ship was capable of.

"Company secrets, Mr. Grady," Katsouranis said.

"So, Dick, huh?" Owen asked Hamada as they continued up the stairs. "What is that, short for Richard or something like that?"

"Dickinson, actually. My parents love poetry, and they really love Emily Dickinson. Hell, they've named my sister after her. I guess you can guess how I got my name." Dickinson Hamada let out a short chuckle on his own misfortune.

"So what did you do before joining Pardew?"

"I was with the Navy, man. I think you're from the Navy too, am I right? Yeah, after the Navy, I spent some time with the French Foreign Legion after that, and then once I was done with the French, Pardew approached me, and it's been a steady fat paycheck ever since."

"The French Foreign Legion? Have you met or seen a guy named Barry Kouassi?"

"I've heard of him, but I haven't really met the guy. Sounds like a good man, though, from what I heard with the other Legionnaires back in the day."

"Where'd you serve?"

"The usual places: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the works. I also spent some time in Indonesia, the Philippines, Nigeria, Chad, Mali and even Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Why, just a few days ago, my unit was just in northern Iraq, helping the Kurdish peshmerga in their fight against Daesh." Daesh was another term for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as it was an acronym made from the first two letters of the self-styled caliphate's official title: _Dawlat Ishlamiyah_.

"So you must have some experience in SARs in high-risk areas," Owen commented.

"Sure," Dickinson said. "But nothing's prepared me, or frankly every one of us, for a SAR on an island filled with dinosaurs."

The ship blew its horn as soon as Katsouranis, Hamada, Owen and Claire had set foot on the deck. The Greek led them to a stack of shipping containers in the middle of the deck. Katsouranis reached out to open one of the containers, Owen said, "You're not telling me that you've got some kind of control center in one of these containers, are you?"

"It's actually a clever disguise," Katsouranis said. "The real control center is deeper inside." Katsouranis opened the doors to reveal that the stacked containers were not actual containers but rather just large metal plates made to look like stacked containers when put up on the deck. The space was actually big and hollow, and two different types of helicopters were inside the space made by the containers. Their rotor blades had been removed because they wouldn't be able to fit inside, but otherwise they looked ready to take off at a moment's notice. More Pardew people were inside preparing equipment and the like for their coming insertion into Isla Sorna.

"We've got another guest in here today," Katsouranis said. "He's the other InGen man that I've been talking about earlier. I think you might know him."

There was a table to the side of the space, and what appeared to be maps were on top of the table. A man was standing beside the table, and his back was turned away from the visitors. As they got closer, Claire recognized the black turtleneck sweater that the man was wearing. "Henry?" she asked.

The man turned around to reveal that he was indeed Henry Wu, head geneticist of both Jurassic World and International Genetics. "Claire," he said in greeting. "And Mr. Grady. You're both finally here."

"Wu, you sneaky bastard." Out of nowhere, Owen walked over to the scientist and slammed his fist into the other man's jaw. Wu staggered back and leaned on the table to regain his balance as he cradled his jaw. To his credit though, he managed not to fall over.

"That was for my raptors, you son of a bitch," Owen said. "For not telling anyone that you added raptor DNA to your goddamned hybrid. I lost almost the whole pack because of the _Indominus_. Your _Indominus_ , Wu."

As Claire moved to step between the two men, she noticed that Katsouranis and Dick Hamada were watching the unfolding scene but not doing anything to keep the argument from possibly escalating into a fight. Katsouranis even looked like he had a small grin on his lips. Meanwhile, Wu had begun laughing, and that irritated Owen even more, making him determined to land another punch on the scientist's face, but Claire held him back.

"I guess I deserved that one," Wu finally said. "But don't blame me; blame Masrani. He's the one who wanted the bigger, badder and crueller dinosaur, and he got it."

"So you were just following orders, huh?" Owen retorted. "Passing the blame to a guy who's already dead? That's pretty low for you, Henry."

"Gentlemen, now is not the time," Claire said.

"It all makes sense now," Owen continued. "Hoskins' obsession with the raptors; the raptor DNA in the _Indominus_ ; those plans for the raptor-sized _Indominuses_ , or _Indomini_ , or whatever their plural is… That's why the fat bastard was taking all those samples and embryos from the lab. Hoskins' men told you about us just before we fled. I know now why you wanted us to go along with you. You're tying up loose ends, aren't you, Henry? You've got these guys pretending to be looking for some plane crash in Sorna, and then once we're far enough to sea you're gonna have us killed and our bodies dumped into the sea, right?"

"All right, Grady, now you're just going paranoid and letting your mind and mouth run off," Wu countered. "Believe it or not, I don't know these people too. I'm here for the same reasons you are: they need some people to help them around Sorna, and they got me. Besides, what do I have to gain by having you two killed? It's actually going to be a net loss because it's just child's play in rebuilding J-World, and even if that doesn't happen, I'm sure you two will have good futures in Japan or Europe." He sighed and then continued, "Okay, so Vic and I have been working together to create dinosaurs as soldiers. What are you going to do about it?"

"Oh, you wanna see me do something about it?" Owen made to punch Wu once again, and the scientist stood firm against the coming attack, but Claire had had enough of them.

"That's enough!" she almost shouted. "Seriously, Owen, Henry, are you two going to fight just because of your little differences!? Pull yourselves together and show some respect for yourselves! Owen, put a lid on it, take a deep breath, back off and walk it away. And you, Henry, you've got some explaining to do to me, and to all of us. We saw the specimens in your lab and office, and the blueprints. _I_ saw them all. And Hoskins and his men were taking it all with them. What have you been up to all this time?"

Wu leaned back on the table once again, this time on his own accord. "Those specimens that you saw in the lab were just side projects of mine, some proofs-of-concept, if you will. I'm just testing new techniques in manipulating DNA. What, did you think making the _Indominus_ was just a matter of slapping together the bits of DNA that I needed to create a hybrid organism? It's not that easy. If you want to create a hybrid from two massively different species, you have to find the pieces of DNA that code for specific parts and traits from both species, look for and remove redundancies, cut out the excess and start from scratch when you find out you've been doing it the wrong way this whole time.

"As for why I'm here, I've said it just moments ago: they need people who've been on Sorna. I know that you've been to Sorna, Claire. Your aunt Victoria brought you to Site B, didn't she? I remember, because I was there too when you were there. But I bring more to the table, because I haven't just been on Sorna; I know that island like the back of my hand.

"John Hammond bought Sorna from the Costa Ricans just a year after buying Nublar. Once he'd decided that Nublar was going to be the site of Jurassic Park, most of our industrial cloning processes were moved to Sorna, and we established Site B. We perfected our cloning processes there, and then once we'd done that, Sorna became our playground, our sandbox. We were free to create whatever we wanted there."

"Maybe that was the problem with you people," Owen said. "I mean, once you knew how to clone dinosaurs, it's all about 'could I clone this or that?' instead of 'should I clone this?'" When the others turned to look at him, he added, "Ian Malcolm has a perfectly valid point about that, you know?"

Wu shook his head and continued. "Anyway, while we were producing orgs for the park itself, we went off on some side projects of our own. I worked on perfecting Version 4.4 just in case Hammond felt that it was time to upgrade our attractions—"

"Orgs? Version 4.4? Upgrades?" Owen couldn't help but chuckle. "You really have no feeling for the animals that you're bringing back to life, do you?" Owen then shook his head and walked away once again.

"I had some Version 4.4 orgs in the pipeline in Sorna," Wu continued. "Laura—Dr. Sorkin—continued refining her technique in using pure and authentic dinosaur DNA to create orgs without using the DNA of other animals. Victoria—Dr. Everett—meanwhile, she was working on creating a hybrid."

"A hybrid dinosaur?" Claire asked. This was the first time that she had known that her aunt was involved in that kind of business with InGen. "You were already thinking of making hybrids back then?"

"Of course," Wu replied. "Even back then, we had predicted that there will come a time when the public will grow tired or desensitized of our attractions, meaning that we'll have to give them something quite new and unexpected. Anyway, Clarissa came, we abandoned Site B, and the dinosaurs were let loose. Now, we've estimated that there are at least thirty to forty different species of dinosaur living on Sorna. The herbivores mostly live in the perimeter of the island, with the carnivores sticking to center of Sorna. There is one exception to that rule, though, and that is the northern part of Sorna, where your plane crashed," he said to Katsouranis. "We call that place Carnivore Country because that's what it is, to be honest. You won't find a lot of herbivores there because they'll get eaten at the first possible opportunity by the orgs living there. We know that there are dilophosaurs, raptors, compys, a breeding pair of tyrannosaurs, and some kind of large org that we haven't matched up to any species on our list.

"It's basically the worst place to crash into," Wu continued. "The chances of survival, provided that you made it alive through the crash, are very, very slim. All dinosaurs there are bloodthirsty seeing as they don't have a steady supply of prey. God forbid if something happens there that makes you bleed."

"Well, thank God my period just ended three days ago," Claire muttered under her breath with a hint of sarcasm. Suddenly her cellphone rang, breaking the silence that had fallen upon them. All eyes fell on her as she took her phone out. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's my sister. I have to take this. Very nice reception here, though," she told Katsouranis.

"We've got our own cell tower," he said.

Claire moved away from the others, who had begun talking after Wu and Owen's tempers had cooled off. She lifted her phone to her and said, "Hello, Karen."

"Claire, where are you?" Claire's sister Karen Mitchell said from the other end of the call. "I've been looking all over for you. You weren't in the hangars; you weren't in the local Masrani office... we don't know where you are! The boys are worried. I'm worried. Where are you?" she repeated.

"Don't be so worried about me, Karen," Claire replied. She sighed and continued, "Look, something's come up. I'm currently out of town on some... work-related stuff."

"Work-related stuff?" Karen parroted. "Just like the stuff that you were doing yesterday?"

"No, no, this is much, much different from what I was doing yesterday. Okay, I know that I promised Zach and Gray that I'm going to spend more time with them starting today, but this... it came up so suddenly that I was literally whisked away as soon as they met with me. I should be back by lunchtime tomorrow, though, and then it's no more absentee Aunt Claire for the boys."

"Lunchtime tomorrow? Are you sure about that, Claire?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay. You heard that, boys? Aunt Claire said that she'll be back by lunchtime tomorrow!"

"Yeah, we heard!" Claire's nephews, Zach and Gray, said in unison. "We'll be waiting for you, Aunt Claire! We love you!"

"I love you too," Claire replied. Then, slowly, she ended the call.

"Your nephews?" Owen asked as he walked up to her. He couldn't help but listen in on the call even as he was listening to Wu guiding the Pardew people through Sorna.

"Their mother, actually," she replied. "My sister. I'd promised them that I'd be spending more time with them starting today, and look where I am now: on a ship headed away from them all once again."

"Don't kick yourself about it, Claire," Owen said. "It's not your fault that we got drawn—dragged, I should say—into this. Surely we'll be able to find the Pardews quickly, whatever may have happened to them. It's just a few more hours, and then we'll be on our way back to Costa Rica in no time."

"I just hope that I'll be able to keep this one promise this time."

She had no way of knowing it right then, but it would turn out to be another promise that Claire wouldn't be able to keep.

* * *

A/N: Whoo! Second-longest chapter I've ever written for fanfiction, I think. And sorry if it took so long. I already know what's going to happen to them once they get on Sorna. It's taking them there that's the most difficult part, for me at least. Anyway, enjoy this chapter, and leave a review, a follow or a favourite whether you liked it or not! Next chapter's coming soon, I promise!


	4. Dino Fight!

They'd arrived off the coast of Sorna at four in the afternoon, just as Katsouranis had said they would. The _Jewel of Esfahan_ was anchored just a few miles away from the sandy beaches of the island's northern shores. The ship's crew had removed the steel panels that hid the two helipads on the ship's deck from curious eyes minutes after the ship had stopped and it was possible to walk the decks without the risk of getting blown overboard. There were two helicopters that had been hidden within the "containers," an MH-6 Little Bird and an UH-1 Iroquois, the venerable Huey that was one of the icons of the Vietnam War. Both choppers had been painted a flat grey, but someone had decided that they needed that little touch of color on their fuselages, and that little touch of color had turned out to be birds, Angry Birds and Flappy Birds, to be exact.

The Pardew contractors would be sending a very small force, or "stick," into Isla Sorna first, and their InGen "advisors" would be along for the ride. Wu would be with Katsouranis on the Little Bird, while Owen and Claire would be on the Huey with the contractors, led by Dickinson Hamada. Someone had somehow managed to get Owen's Marlin 1895 from wherever he had hidden it back in Costa Rica and brought it on the ship, and while his was not to reason why, he was damned glad that he had his gun with him.

The op in itself was simple: get to the crash site, land the contractors and the "advisors" on-site while the Little Bird provided overwatch, find the Pardews and their buddies if they were still alive, and bring them all back to the ship. Even though the contractors already knew their employers' children's faces, Dick Hamada had allowed Owen and Claire to look at some photos of the four that the contractors would be looking for.

The simple and brutal truth, though, is that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and while no one knew what form the enemy would take today, they were definitely on the lookout for it to rear its ugly head.

Dickinson Hamada was very painfully aware of that statement. Born and raised in Hawaii to second-generation Japanese immigrants, he had looked to the armed forces, and the Navy in particular, as a means of getting out of his current situation. But when he had entered the Navy, there were some things that he couldn't help but notice, such as the subject of Pearl Harbor and the whole Pacific campaign of World War Two always coming up whenever he went into a place, and never getting promoted above the rank of seaman despite, according to his more open-minded colleagues, being "quite a damn fine seaman and petty officer." Eventually Dick Hamada made the fateful decision to desert from the Navy. Using assumed names, he fled Hawaii for anyplace else, all the while cursing himself for not following the footsteps of his cousin Katashi and becoming a game warden for the state police.

Hamada then found himself in Europe, France specifically. He drifted through the streets of Paris before deciding to join the French Foreign Legion. Like many others before him, he had joined the Legion as a chance to start anew. Indeed, after going through quite literally the toughest training course ever devised by man, Dickinson Hamada had felt an entirely new man once he had accepted his commission into the Legion.

During his six years in the Legion, Hamada had then been deployed to various places around the world like Algeria, Mali, Somalia, French Guiana, and other places that had once been part of France's vast colonial empire. Mostly they did policing duties, keeping the natives placated by flying the tricolour on their land, but sometimes they also went on combat missions. One particular mission that stuck out in Hamada's mind had been during the northern Mali conflict of 2013. A combined Malian and Foreign Legion force had been tasked with defending the historic city of Timbuktu from Islamist rebels. The battle of Timbuktu had been intense, if one considered sporadic firefights between small groups—meaning five to ten people—intense. But Hamada did remember that while on patrol through the streets of Timbuktu, they had been ambushed by a bunch of rebels. To say that he had barely survived was accurate, as one of the first bullets that had been fired in the ambush went through the space that his head had just occupied a mere second earlier.

Once he had decided to end his time with the Legion due to homesickness among other factors, Dickinson realized that he couldn't set foot on American soil anymore, not if he didn't want to end up in a jail cell. He was still wanted for desertion after all, and a court martial waited for him on American soil. In all honesty, he was at a loss at what to do until Giannis Katsouranis and Pardew Protection Applications came along and offered him a job as a private security contractor. Sure, it was a return to all sorts of military duties, but by that point Dickinson knew little except fighting, and if he was gonna fight, he might as well fight for something.

Once he had become part of Pardew, Hamada had been involved in the fighting in both eastern Ukraine and Iraqi Kurdistan, fighting the pro-Russian separatists and the radical fundamentalist Islamists of the Islamic State respectively. Now he was about to go into an island filled with dinosaurs. In all honesty, he would have preferred facing an entire battalion of separatists or Islamists over a single dinosaur. Especially if the dinosaur was a _Tyrannosaurus rex_.

Not that his companions were any less competent. There were three other contractors in the Huey with him and the InGen "advisors." They were all former members of the armed forces, and they had joined Pardew for varied reasons. Dick was sure that the higher income of being a private contractor as compared to an actual serving member of the army had something to do with their decisions. But just because they had gone for the option with more money didn't mean that they weren't good fighters and warriors too. Private security was a very dangerous job after all, and Pardew made sure that its employees were well compensated.

"Just four guys for a SAR?" Owen asked Hamada as they prepared to board the Huey. "And how exactly are we supposed to get the Pardew kids and their buddies back to the ship?"

"We're good at what we do, Mr. Grady," Hamada replied. "Also, our job is just to look for them and secure the site. If—when—we find them, we've got another chopper here that'll go and pick them up. If we don't see them, we just look around as long as we can."

The ship's deck began to get noisy as the engines of the Huey and the Little Bird spooled to life. Just as the pilots were given the thumbs-up to lift off of the deck, the windsock filled up in a direction perpendicular to that which the choppers were facing. "Looks like we'll be getting some crosswinds coming up," Hamada said on the intercom. "Hold on to your butts," he added with a grin.

The Huey lifted off of the deck with a shudder, and Claire's hand suddenly gripped Owen's arm. "What's wrong?" he asked. "What are you afraid of? Flying or helicopters?"

"Not really," Claire replied. "It's just that Mr. Masrani had flown me to the paddock yesterday when he was still not yet fully qualified to fly." Was it just yesterday? Claire asked herself. It had felt like it had all happened sixty-five million years ago.

"Don't worry, ma'am," Hamada said. "I'm sure Millsap here is quite the helicopter pilot. Ain't that right, Millsap?"

"Yes siree, Dick," Millsap, the pilot, replied.

Soon the two helicopters were able to fly above the crosswind, and they formed up and then flew in formation towards Sorna. The flight there was mostly quiet, with no one speaking more than what absolutely had to be said. Ten minutes later they were "feet dry," meaning they were now flying over land instead of water. At first glance, Sorna seemed untouched by any moving life, and then once they cleared the beaches and the eroded rim of the ancient caldera that had formed Sorna, the island opened itself up to them. Below they could see massive herds of herbivorous dinosaurs from sauropods to hadrosaurs to ceratopsians all moving in one huge biomass through the grasslands of the island. It was a sight that would have warmed any dinosaur lover's heart.

"If only people could see the dinosaurs like this," Owen said. "Living together without boundaries." He then turned to look at Claire and added," Wait a minute, I know that look. Don't tell me. When J-World's back online, there'll be helicopter tours over Nublar while everyone else's still busy renovating Main Street."

Claire slapped his thigh in response. "I was just joking!" he backpedalled.

"It's not a joke because it's not funny," Claire said, but the hint of a smile on her lips was enough to tell him that maybe she did find it funny after all.

As they flew deeper into Sorna, a tyrannosaurus poked its head out of the forest canopy and let loose a great roar at the two mysterious flying objects intruding in its territory. This time it was Owen who gripped tightly the edge of his seat. The memories of last night's fight—was it just last night?—were still fresh in his mind, and while he had succeeded—not by much, to be honest—to push the scenes of the two rexes fighting each other to the back of his mind, the tyrannosaur's bellowing roar brought the memories all back to the forefront of his consciousness. Every man feared death, and Owen Grady was no exception. That night in Jurassic World, the battle between the _Indominus_ and the _Tyrannousaurus_ and the _Velociraptors_ on Main Street while the helpless humans could only watch and try not to get stepped on or fallen upon. Seeing as the tyrannosaur had weighed eight tons, being human paste under a _T. rex_ foot wasn't the best way to go, admittedly.

Owen tried to force the memories of last night back to the back of his mind by focusing on the task at hand. "How far are we from the crash site?" he asked.

"GPS says that we should be on top of it any minute now," Dick Hamada replied. "But right now I'm not seeing anything that looks like an open field or something like it—hang on, I see it now."

Because the trees were taller on the side they were coming from, it had looked like there was no clearing there, just lush forest, but once they had cleared the treetops they could see a large field of brown mud flanked by forest on all sides. A few hardy trees had managed to grow up from the thick muddy soil, and in between those few and scattered trees was the wreckage of a business jet. The tail and rudder, along with a portion of the rear fuselage, had managed to survive the impact intact, but the same couldn't be said for the rest of the plane. That had seemingly disintegrated upon impact with the ground. Only a miracle or being in the rear of the plane when it crashed could have made someone survive that crash.

"Set us down near the rudder," Hamada ordered. The pilot nodded and brought the Huey closer to the rudder, the largest bit of wreckage still intact on the site. The pilot brought the Huey to a hover just a few feet beside the tail and then softly set it down on the muddy ground. The Pardew contractors moved quickly out of the helicopter as soon as it was on the ground. Owen and Claire followed them out soon after, and once everyone was off, the pilot lifted off the chopper and then began flying a loop over the crash site.

Owen reached for something behind him and brought out a canteen that he had "borrowed" from the _Esfahan_. He unscrewed the cap and took a deep drink. He wouldn't call himself an alcoholic, but he had indulged himself with occasional sips from the bottle once he found out that he was going to be working with dinosaurs in general and velociraptors in particular. It was the sort of situation where it made more sense when he was slightly drunk than when he was sober. No one else; meaning no one who wasn't supposed to know; had managed to pick up on it, although Claire had found out about it recently when they had gone into Nublar's restricted area to look for her nephews.

Claire saw him taking a sip out of the canteen now, however, and she asked, "Are you drinking again?"

"Just a sip," Owen replied as he capped the canteen and returned it to his belt. "Nothing that will make me too drunk to walk."

Their small group had gone closer to the rudder section of the plane. At first glance, it looked much like one would expect of plane parts that had survived a crash. Upon closer inspection however, some, if not most of the scratches and dents didn't look like they had been made by sudden contact and impact with the ground. Dickinson Hamada had seen his fair share of plane crashes—hell, he'd been on a chopper that had been shot down by ISIS forces back in Iraq—and he had never seen crash damage like what he was seeing now. He reached out to touch one of the scratches, and he felt some kind of rectangular indentations within it. Somehow it reminded him of teeth, and he shivered unconsciously.

Beyond the plane's tail, Owen had noticed something on the mud near some seats that had been ejected from the wreckage. There was some kind of hiking boot near the seats, along with a large three-toed footprint. "Looks like someone fed a rex," he muttered. The hiking boot looked to be a man's shoe, so that was one of the people on the plane accounted for. A walk through the site revealed little more than that boot, but then again he didn't expect there to be any. People liked to imagine kill sites as being very bloody and strewn with bits from whatever had become the hunter's latest meal, but that simply wasn't true. Owen had heard stories from when Masrani and InGen had gone back to Nublar to clear the way for Jurassic World. The old rex was still wandering the island, and when the hunters had confronted her, the rex had taken one of the hunters, threw him into the air and quite literally swallowed the poor bastard whole. A _T. rex_ was entirely capable of eating a human and leaving behind little to no evidence of the kill having happened.

Then Owen noticed a set of shoeprints coming from the fuselage. This set of prints had gone in circles before going back into the wreckage, and then whoever had made those prints had gone out of the wreckage once again and met up with another larger pair of shoeprints. The two sets then went off into the jungle, following two other sets of prints that had already gone into the forest ahead of them.

Something didn't add up, at least to Owen's mind. Four sets of footprints obviously meant four people. There were four people onboard the Pardew jet when it had crashed. That meant that all four people onboard the plane had survived the crash. Then who was the unlucky bastard that had been eaten?

"How many people did you say were on this plane of yours?" Owen asked Dick Hamada.

"Four," the Pardew contractor replied. "Why?"

"See these tracks?" Owen pointed at the shoeprints in question. "That's four people making it through the crash and running off into the forest. But see that boot over there, and the big footprint beside it? That means that at least one person got eaten. It doesn't add up."

"You're right," Hamada said. "Our people in Atlanta said that they saw only Matt, Irene and their two buddies get on the plane. They must have picked up at least one person in either San Jose or Managua. Shit, that probably explains the stopovers. The plane's got enough range to get from Atlanta to Sorna direct, so stopping over to pick up some people explains the stopovers in Costa Rica and Nicaragua."

Hamada then reached for the radio clipped to the right shoulder strap of his webbing and called out to the helicopters orbiting above them. "Angry Bird, this is Collector," he said. "We've found some tracks leading into the forest due north. Request that you turn on your infrared and take a look at the forest. Our guests don't want to go in there until we know what's in there."

Onboard the Little Bird, whose callsign was "Angry Bird," Katsouranis nodded to the Little Bird's pilot, who flicked a switch on the instrumentation panel. A flat iPad-like device on Katsouranis' lap turned on and showed the clearing through the infrared spectrum. On it he could see the six people that had come from the Huey shining a bright white on the IR, in contrast to the ground itself, which was a deep blue that was almost black. Large three-toed footprints that had obviously come from some kind of large animal glowed orange and red on the IR due to the residual body heat that had been transferred to the ground. "Okay, Collector, we've got you on our screen," he told Hamada. "There's nothing in the forest north except for some kind of large heat signature. It's a structure of some kind, not an animal if that's what you were asking."

Back down on the ground, the people there a soft hooting coming from the trees to the west. Hamada looked up at where he had heard the hooting coming from and asked, "Owls?"

" _Dilophosaurus_ ," Owen and Claire replied at the same time. Anywhere else on earth, owls could and would have probably explained the hooting. But here on Sorna, there was only one species of dinosaur that made such a hooting cry, and that was _Dilophosaurus wetherilli_. Thanks to Jurassic World, everyone thought that all dilophosaurs were venomous, had large retractable neck frills and looked like dromeosaurid dinosaurs like _Velociraptor_. Which was all a big stinking heap of crap, as real palaeontologists know that dilophosaurs actually had no neck frills and weren't even poisonous in the first place. As for their looks, there was some kind of gap between their front teeth and their main teeth that was quite obvious on fossilized specimens but not included in the Jurassic World "resurrection" of this particular species of dinosaur. And once again it was all Henry Wu's fault, as he had all but admitted to using frilled-neck lizard and spitting cobra DNA to fill in the gaps in the actual dilophosaur genome.

" _Dilophosaurus_? Are those dangerous?" Hamada asked.

"Very," Owen replied. "They're man-sized; they're venomous; they can spit up to fifty meters away, and they won't hesitate to attack humans."

"What are we supposed to do now?"

"Uh… hide!" Just as Owen had said that, a dilophosaur peeked out of the trees. It had a pair of red crests on the top of its snout. There was some kind of gap or notch between its three front-most teeth and the rest of its teeth. A cold, yellow reptilian eye blinked in its socket, and the dinosaur let out a hooting cry. This was answered by at least five more hoots, followed by an equal number of animals poking their heads out of the trees.

It was an entire pack of dilophosaurs about to come into the clearing.

"This just keeps getting better and better," Owen muttered. He, Claire and the Pardew contractors then bolted for the eastern side of the clearing just as the dilophosaurs burst out of the western side. The dilos were the color of human flesh, at least humans of the Caucasian variety. Their underbellies were white and red streaks ran from their eye sockets down to their necks. The dilophosaur in front had very bright red nasal crests, leading Owen to assume that that was this particular pack's alpha.

"Angry Bird, this is Collector," Hamada almost whispered into his radio. "Get Flappy Bird down here for an exfil." "Flappy Bird" was the callsign of the Huey that had dropped them off just minutes earlier.

"Collector, this is Angry Bird," Katsouranis said from the Little Bird. "We're picking up medium-sized heat signatures coming towards you. You may want to find another place to hide!"

At that moment, their small group was just about to slip into the trees to the east of the clearing when they saw a large shadow moving through the woods. They stopped in their tracks, and just in time, as the shadow between the trees finally resolved itself into a kind of massive raptor-like dinosaur. This one looked like an eight-meter version of a velociraptor, except this dinosaur looked more like an _Oviraptor_ than a _Velociraptor_ when it comes to the head. Also, this dinosaur had feather-like bristles covering almost the entirety of its body except for the head and the feet. The twelve-inch sickle claw shone dully in the light of the setting sun. It was a gigantic raptor. It was a _Gigantoraptor_.

The gigantoraptor let out a loud barking call, similar to a velociraptor's but deeper in timbre. Three more gigantoraptors replied the call, and these three raptors popped out of the trees behind the alpha gigantoraptor. There were still more raptors in the trees.

"Back away slowly," Owen hissed. Their little group retraced their steps without taking their eyes off of the gigantoraptors. Owen dared a short glance back at the dilophosaurs, who had grown agitated once the gigantoraptors had made their presence known. _I really hope they fight against each other_ , he thought. _I wouldn't want to become a dilo-raptor sandwich_.

Luckily for them, it looked as if the dilophosaurs and the gigantoraptors were more interested in each other than the humans standing in between them. The alpha gigantoraptor raised its arms, ruffled its proto-feathers and screeched. The alpha dilophosaurus replied with a screech of its own, although this one sounded like it had phlegm stuck in its throat. Owen half-expected the animal to raise up its neck frill and spit its venom, but instead the alpha dilo's nasal crests only turned bright red, the color of arterial blood.

The alpha dilophosaur stomped his right foot, and the alpha gigantoraptor did the same. The alpha dilo turned to his packmates and let out a long hoot, and the alpha gigantoraptor did the same with his own packmates, but with barking instead of hooting. The two packs then faced each other, roared as loudly as they all could, and then they rushed towards each other.


	5. Into the Forest

A/N: Sorry for the long delay between the story. I went over my initial story and decided that it needed a lot of trimming and changing before I could be satisfied with the end result. I just want to give a good story to anyone who wants to read them. Some changes involve plot and character changes, but overall, I think that the basic story is still the same: people have to go to an island with dinosaurs and get out of there alive, but there's going to be a lot of twists and turns before they could even begin thinking of getting out.

Enjoy the next installment of J-World: The Most Dangerous Game. – GR

* * *

"Tell your people to get out of here, and quick!" Owen told Dick Hamada as the dilophosaurs and gigantoraptors began fighting right in the middle of the crash site. "Things are going to get bad really soon!"

Hamada relayed the orders on the radio, and the Pardew contractors split up in different directions. Owen, Claire, and Dickinson ended up jumping behind a large fallen tree on the northern edge of the clearing from which they had a good view of the two alpha dinosaurs fighting each other.

"Did you see that?" Claire asked Owen in a low tone. "Those dilos don't have frills and venom!"

"I know, right? And those giant raptors are all feathered!" Owen said in agreement. "There's no way that J-World or the old InGen made these animals. And last time I looked, _Gigantoraptor_ wasn't on InGen's list. Both lists, in fact."

"Hang on a minute there," Dick interrupted them. "What are you guys talking about? No frills? Feathered raptors? What the hell is going on?"

"It's a long story," Claire said in reply. "But, long story short, there are organisms here on Sorna that neither InGen nor Masrani created."

"I hate to think about what else is in store for us," Owen muttered to himself.

Dickinson's radio crackled with static once again. "Collector, this is Angry Bird," Giannis Katsouranis said, his voice on the radio scratchy. "Things have gotten very confusing down there. Is there any place for Flappy Bird to set down?"

"We're watching dinosaurs fighting here, Gian, believe it or not," Dick replied. "And I don't think we're gonna be finding anyplace for Flappy Bird to land anytime soon."

"Hang on, Dick, we're gonna be clearing up some space for you," Katsouranis said.

"Roger that." Then, to the InGen people, he told them, "Get ready! We're going loud!"

"Wait, what?" Owen asked. "What are you going to do? Shoot the animals?"

"It's the only way we can get out here, man!"

"No! There's got to be another way!" And just like that, Owen leaped up from behind the log and ran back out into the clearing, waving his hands at the choppers and shouting at them to stop. "Owen, get back here!" Claire shouted.

"There's nothing else we can do anymore, Grady!" Dickinson shouted to no effect. "Shit! He's not gonna listen to anyone except himself. Have you ever fired a gun before?" he suddenly asked Claire.

"What? No! Does a tranquilizer gun count?" Claire blurted out in reply.

"I thought so. Okay, this is what you're going to do,' Dickinson told her. "You go get out there and drag your boyfriend's ass right back here, or else he'll end up in pieces because of the dinosaurs or the Little Birds. Don't worry, I'll cover you. That's why I asked you if you could shoot in the first place."

"He's not my boyfriend," Claire countered.

"Just go!"

Owen waved his arms as fast as he could at the approaching Little Bird, which was already lining up a shot on the two fighting alphas. He shouted at the top of his lungs, "No! Don't shoot!" But even as he kept his distance from the dinosaurs, he saw that he was too late; the Little Bird had fired off a pair of unguided rockets at the dueling dinosaurs, and then everything began to happen in slow motion for Owen. The rockets exploded just a few meters above the ground, and the twin fireballs from their explosions threw him and the dinosaurs back by several feet.

Owen slipped in and out of consciousness throughout, but during the brief periods that he was vaguely awake, he could remember seeing sights that he would never ever forget, not in this life anyway. He saw one of the Pardew contractors running right in between two fighting dinosaurs, and the man disappeared between the jaws of those dinosaurs. He also saw a hapless dilophosaur get torn apart by the twin miniguns mounted on the Little Bird's hardpoints, bullet holes appearing on the animal's body and giving it the appearance of Swiss cheese. Owen felt hands tugging at his shirt, and he looked up and saw Claire and Dick pulling him away from what was rapidly turning into a battlefield.

Claire shouted something that Owen in his shell-shocked state couldn't understand, and then he felt himself drop back onto the ground as Dick let go of him and began firing his USAS-12. And even though Owen couldn't hear what they were saying, Dick's hand gestures were more than enough to tell him that the Pardew contractor wanted them out of Dodge ASAP. By then, Owen had regained some control of his arms and legs, and he hauled himself up onto his feet with Claire's help, but they had only made a few steps towards the trees when another explosion sent them back on their knees.

This time, Owen was unconscious for longer than he felt his eyes were open. He had only brief flashes of memory from this time and some of them were very confusing. One was that he somehow remembered seeing Dick flying before the explosion had happened, and a part of his brain was telling him that that particular memory made no sense. Then there was also an image of Dick Hamada leaning back on a tree with a large red wound on his chest and a Colt M1911A1 pistol in his hand. He was saying something but Owen couldn't hear the words. When his hearing returned, all he heard was the sound of the Colt firing and the dinosaurs roaring.

Two consecutive explosions had not been very kind on Owen's body and mind. As he staggered into the forest under Claire's help and guidance, random thoughts floated freely in Owen's mind. And what he had thought was just an overused cliché was actually turning out to be true: he could see his life flashing before his eyes. He could see his childhood home in Minnesota, all the regular college shit that he and his friends did at Purdue, his enlistment into the Navy, spending time with the Navy's search-and-rescue dolphins, and then training to become a Navy SEAL and all the missions that he had been in, including the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. Some of the more recent events in his life also flew through his mind's eye: running from the _Indominus_ , being chased by his own raptors, and then ending up on "the other island" against all common sense. Then again, sometimes common sense left even the most sensible people, and Owen considered himself quite the sensible man.

Owen next found himself lying down on a patch of bare and flattened grass with Claire standing over him. He felt his lips move but he couldn't hear what he had said. Slowly, Claire brought up her right hand and began to swing, and once her palm hit Owen's cheek, the world went back to its normal pace. "What the hell was that for!?" he demanded as he sat up and began rubbing his face.

"I had to knock some sense back into you, Grady," Claire said, referring to Owen by his surname. "You were getting very incoherent."

"What made you think that, Dearing?" She only used surnames when talking to people who had made her angry or frustrated, of which Owen had done a lot during their brief and ill-fated relationship.

"You told me that I was beautiful."

Owen winced. "Shit, I said that?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yes," Claire said, looking at Owen directly with those piercing green eyes. Claire had never been a good liar, which had made things both easy and hard for the two of them.

"Ah, shit," Owen muttered. He pinched the bridge of his nose and then he said, "What happened back there?"

"Everything's a mess," Claire replied. "It's all chaotic and gone to hell."

"What happened to Dick?"

"I saw him get kicked by one of those huge raptor-like creatures, and then one of their helicopters fired a rocket at the dinosaur. He was still firing his gun last time that I saw him."

"Poor bastard," Owen said. "He just can't get a break with dinosaurs, can he? His cousin gets killed by a genetically engineered dinosaur, and then he gets kicked in the chest by another genetically engineered dinosaur." He then looked around and saw that they were in the forest, on a trail of flattened grass and vegetation which he knew was a game trail. "Now where the hell are we?" he asked, more to himself than to Claire, who nevertheless responded.

"We're north of the place where the plane crashed," she said. "I thought that this trail was a good place to stop and rest."

"Yeah, well, not for long," Owen said. The trail was wide enough for a vehicle to pass through, meaning it had probably been laid out as a road back in the days of the old Site B, but the jungle had reclaimed most of the path by now. However, there were footprints that had been hardened into the mud and soil by the hot tropical sun, and Owen recognized the prints as coming from carnivorous dinosaurs. "If we don't get off this trail soon, we're going to end up meeting carnivores, and it's not going to end well for us." Owen stood up and then looked around. "Where's my gun?" he asked.

"I got it," Claire said, taking Owen's lever-action rifle by its sling and handing it over to him. "God, that thing is so heavy!"

Owen slung his gun on his left shoulder. "No time to waste," he said as he started walking. Claire quickly followed behind him. The barking howls of raptors and other animals echoed through the jungle on the sides of the trail, and Owen's legs unconsciously began speeding up. Claire struggled to keep up.

They had been walking for what had felt like an hour but was actually just fifteen minutes when they encountered a large brown pyramid-shaped mass which was being swarmed by flies. "Oh, this just keeps getting better and better," Owen muttered.

"Is that what I think it is?" Claire asked.

"Yep. That big pile of shit right there is a territorial marker. We're now in some very big carnivore's territory."

"Should we turn around, go back the way we came?"

"No, no." Owen shook his head. "The dilos and gigantoraptors are still there. I'd rather face one big guy than a lot of small guys." They went past the dung pile and down the game trail. The two of then rounded a bend in the trail and then they saw what was in front of them and stopped.

There was a large building, almost like a warehouse, right in front of them. The walls had once been painted white but were now covered in vines, leaves, and some kind of brown stuff which could be dried blood. A large metal sliding door at the front of the building, similar to a garage door, now sported a massive hole right in its middle, easily big enough for a full adult Tyrannosaurus to pass through. The game trail branched off, with one fork going into the hole and the other continuing deeper into the forest. A smaller door, also made of metal but probably of a much sturdier design, was off to the side of the structure.

"What the hell is this place?" Owen asked out loud.

"It can't be from the old Site B," Claire said. "It's not as overgrown as the old site, and it looks too, well, modern," she said as she searched for the right word to describe it.

A massive roar somewhere in the distance rumbled the air and reached their ears. Owen seemed to have recognized the roar because his face showed a subtle hint of fear and terror that was now coursing through his veins. He then grabbed Claire's arm and together they ran for the small door on the warehouse's side.

"Do you know what made that roar?" Claire asked him as they ran.

"No, not really," Owen admitted, "but it's definitely something very, very big. It probably also made the whole on the side of this place as well." They had finally reached the door, which showed some signs of rusting at the hinges and on some spots on the front, but otherwise it looked sturdy. Owen reached for the rust-coated handle and turned it. The handle moved freely and, with just a little tug, the door swung open. "Unlocked," he muttered. "What a surprise."

"Do you think whoever was last here left in a hurry?" Claire asked.

"It wouldn't surprise me if whatever made that hole over there had something to do with it. Come on!" As another roar shook the forest, Owen took Claire by the arm once again and hauled her inside, and she had to grab the handle and close the door behind her.


	6. Pardew Protection

Most people knew north London as the place where two very famous football clubs in England were based, Arsenal Football Club and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. The skyline of north London, while having its fair share of skyscrapers, was very much dominated by the two stadiums which Arsenal and Tottenham called home, the Emirates Stadium and White Hart Lane, respectively. But, in recent years, a new skyscraper rose up over these two stadiums and took up a dominating place in the north London skyline, and it was put up there by a boy from north London.

Richard Pardew was born just a few doors down from the old Arsenal Stadium at Highbury and hence was a lifelong fan of the Gunners. The young Richard Pardew was also driven by a sense of both adventure and fighting for what he believed in and that was what led him to hooliganism, which was a bit endemic in English football in the 80s. After a few close shaves with the law and going through a short-term crisis with regards to the course of his life, Richard Pardew decided that perhaps it was time that he did something a little more worthwhile with his life, so he decided to join the army, specifically the Parachute Regiment. In fairness to him, Pardew did well with the "Paras," as the British liked to call them, but after five years with the Paras, he wanted something more, and he decided to apply for selection to the elite of the elite, the Special Air Service, or SAS.

Richard Pardew served the SAS, if not with distinction then certainly as well as a trooper could. His most notable deployment was during the 1991 Gulf War, and there were of course other missions in which he participated which were still classified, "blacker than black," so to speak. But once his wife gave birth to his first child, Richard found soldiering to now be too extreme for his tastes, and he retired from the SAS in 1992. But despite that, Richard came to believe that in the post-Cold War world, without two rival superpowers to maintain the balance of power throughout the world, regional fights between countries and peoples within the same borders would flare up and become the focus of 21st-century conflict. Six years after leaving the SAS, in 1998, Richard Pardew established the Pardew Protection Services Company alongside six fellow ex-soldiers with the aim of providing security services to VIPs such as politicians and businessmen.

With the advent of the War on Terror and Richard Pardew's vision of a future defined by "low-intensity" conflicts restricted to within nation-states, tiny Pardew Protection Services grew and expanded, taking on more high-risk assignments in very volatile areas such as the Kashmir Mountains, the Congo, and Southeast Asia until Pardew Protection, now known by the grander and more convoluted name Pardew Consumer Services and Protection Applications (but still commonly referred to by everyone as Pardew Protection), became a well-established private military company in its own right. Richard Pardew used to participate in these assignments back when his company was still a small upstart, but as Pardew Protection became involved with the big conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pardew relegated himself into the background and let his own people handle the assignments more and more, a sign of how much he trusted them to do their jobs. He also did this so that he could be around his children more, but as recent events would prove, his presence during their growing up didn't seem to have made much of an impact on the growth of Matt and Irene.

But even as Pardew Protection grew and expanded, Richard knew that there was a time when the battlefield would experience another paradigm shift once again, like the one that occurred with the War on Terror, when flying airliners into buildings became a legitimate weapon of choice and battlefields shifted from actual fields and plains to the streets, mosques, churches, and cities. Richard could already see the shift occurring with the rise of technological accoutrements such as drones and remotely operated vehicles on the modern battlefield. Drones could very well be the soldiers of the battlefield of the future, meaning that not a single human soldier would have to be sent into harm's way ever again. Richard Pardew believed that technology was the wave of the future, he really did. But then a chance encounter with an old acquaintance would make him change his mind on that, if not categorically, then with a few adjustments and amendments.

Vicente Hoskins had been a soldier for nearly all of his life. When he started off as a draftee in the Vietnam War, he didn't want to be one, to be honest, but once he had been blooded in combat in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Vic found out that he actually liked fighting and soldiering, and he stayed on in the US Army after realizing that the army would have to be shaken up and even changed from the inside out in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Hoskins watched as the Army changed from the incompetently-led force that stumbled around in the jungles and swamps of Vietnam into the technologically-assisted wonder that had overrun the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait within a matter of hours. Satisfied that he was leaving the Army better off than when he came into it, Vic Hoskins left the Army a few months after the end of the Gulf War, but not before making some friends and acquaintances, among them a young Brit trooper in the SAS named Richard Pardew.

When Hoskins and Pardew met again in 2013, both men had come a long way from the time when they first met each other. Richard Pardew was now the head and owner of his own private military company while Vic Hoskins was now the head of operations of InGen Security, the former genetics company which was now another PMC, and chief security officer of Jurassic World, the island with all the genetically-engineered dinosaurs. When they stumbled upon each other in that café in Cairo, Pardew thought that it was just a coincidence, but the benefit of hindsight had allowed him to realize that perhaps Hoskins had put quite a bit of thought into encountering him at that moment.

After catching up with each other's lives, the subject finally turned to PMCs. "So, I see that you've finally got your own PMC," Hoskins told Pardew. "Good for you, kid. I think I could have tried my hand at setting up my own PMC myself but I don't have the patience to wait for the big bucks to finally come rolling in."

"Yeah, Vic, that's probably right," Pardew said. "It's not all good sailing, of course, and the hours are horrible, but at least the pay's good. And how about you now, though? InGen head of ops as well as J-World security chief! How do you balance protecting and shooting people with watching over a bunch of dinosaurs?"

"It's all good, it's all good," Hoskins said, nodding his head. "Although there are already rumors that InGen's going to pull out of the Mideast markets and focus on local security stuff."

"Does that have anything to do with the debacle over in Yemen?" There had been a well-publicized incident about a drone operated by a PMC, rumoured to be InGen, which had attacked a large wedding in the Yemeni capital Sana'a.

"In my defense, the guy getting married was known to be in contact with numerous other jihadis and ragheads," Hoskins said, raising his hands to his chest. "He's basically a recruiter. Someone wants to go kill a Western infidel, he hooks them up with the likes of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Anyway, I don't believe a word of what they say. If we're actually pulling out of the Middle East then why are we still accepting contracts from the Syrian opposition and the Iraqi government?"

"Well, I'm not surprised to hear that the Iraqis still need help dealing with their internal problems, but the Syrian opposition?" Pardew took a sip from his mug of coffee before speaking again. "What's going to happen if the media finds out that American PMCs are helping out the Syrian rebels?"

"That's why the media can't know," Hoskins said. "Apparently, in this topsy-turvy world of ours, an American PMC helping out Syrian rebels is actually going to erode the legitimacy of the rebels and add legitimacy to the righteousness of Bashar Assad's dictatorship. Anyway, the Syrian rebels want our help with dealing with some unsavoury folks over in Raqqa. Guys who call themselves the Islamic State or something like it. The Syrians say that they're having problems kicking those guys out of Raqqa so they want our help in doing that. But enough about me and InGen. How's things been going for you, Rich?"

"No one's talking about Pardew Protection, which automatically makes it a good thing," Pardew replied. "We helped out the Malians deal with their thing over in Timbuktu and the Azawad. I think I saw some French DGSE boots on the ground there as well, but then again, that's not surprising as Mali used to be French, right?"

"Once again, good for you, Rich," Hoskins said. He drank from his cup and then he leaned closer to Pardew and said, "Look, Rich, there's something I have to tell you."

"What could that possibly be?" Pardew asked, only slightly curious.

"What's the motto of your company again, Rich? 'On the cutting edge of protecting you,' right?"

"Yeah, sounds about right. What about it?"

"Well, everyone says that technology is the way forward in fighting our future battles, but I think technology's not the true end-all be-all of modern and future warfare," Hoskins explained. "Drones and RC vehicles and robots are all well and good for keeping our soldiers out of harm's way, but what happens when a drone gets shot up or a robot gets blown up by an IED? They can't go back to base by themselves so who has to get them back? Soldiers. And that's not exactly keeping our boys out of harm's way, is it?"

"What's your point, Vic?" Pardew asked, this time listening intently and looking Hoskins in the eye.

Hoskins looked back at Pardew without a blink. "My point is that there is a way to fight without ever sending our boys back into harm's way ever again. Tell me, Rich, what do you know about the velociraptor?"

Pardew snorted in mock derision, as if the question was quite insulting to him. "Who hasn't heard of the velociraptor, Vic?" he said. "They're the ones with the big claws on their feet, can eviscerate a grown man with one swipe?"

"The exact same ones, Rich," Hoskins confirmed. "And don't forget that they're got primate-level intelligences working behind those claws."

"That they do," Pardew agreed. "Velociraptors are exactly the kind of creatures which make people say that some extinct creatures should remain extinct."

"Well, velociraptors are back on this world once again, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop that."

"Maybe. Now, Vic, what has a dinosaur got to do with the future of modern warfare?"

"Just imagine it, Rich," Hoskins said, getting into his rhythm as he was finally talking about a subject with which he was very keen. "Imagine if you can get a pack of velociraptors to do your bidding. They're quite an effective subject to train into following at least basic commands. Just imagine it. You go to a place, maybe a cave like the ones in Tora Bora, trying to follow an HVT or two, and you know that there's a lot of enemies inside but you don't want to go in and see for yourself how heavily defended that place is. So, instead of sending in your troops, you just give the raptors the scent of your targets and release them into the caves. And the good thing with raptors is that they're very hard to injure. They've got thick skin and very big bones, and their vital organs are very well protected inside a big ribcage. We haven't proven it yet, of course, but I think you can pump a whole magazine from an AK into a raptor and it will still tear you apart for fun. Then, once they've taken out the target and quite probably the rest of the enemies as well, all it takes to bring them back to their pens is another command or so and that's it. Not a single body from your side will ever be in the line of fire."

Both Pardew and Hoskins went silent as Pardew absorbed this information and Hoskins let him do so. Even as he did so, Pardew's mind was already churning with even more possibilities: what if there was a way to combine these raptors with the technological advancements? Drones and robots were already fitted with guns and missiles; why not raptors? And why stop at sending in the raptors immediately to attack targets? Based on what Pardew had read about velociraptors, they were good ambush predators as well as natural experts at stealth. It wasn't too big of a leap to imagine using raptors to scout out a suspected enemy base to confirm or deny if it was actually under enemy control. The possibilities, while not exactly limitless, still numbered at quite a lot.

And then Richard Pardew's scepticism got the better of him. "Why are you telling me this, Vic?" he asked. "Simply put, we're working for two different PMCs. InGen and Pardew Protection are basically competitors in the same market. You've just told me what amounts to your biggest trade secret. Why would you do that?"

"Why do we have to treat each other as competitors when we can be what we really are, as friends?" Hoskins asked back. "Look, Rich, I haven't been completely honest with you. After the mess we—meaning InGen—left behind in Yemen, it's been decided that it's time to give up our assignments in the places that are always in the news like Afghanistan and Iraq and the like. That job in central Syria I told you about just a few minutes ago? That's the last job we're ever gonna take in the Middle East. After that, we're settling into low-visibility jobs like providing additional security for big events or augmenting local forces in countries which ninety percent of Americans can't find on a map. What do you think people are gonna think if after doing this, InGen announces that it's created battle raptors? I quite like the sound of that, actually. Patent it for me, will you, Rich? Anyway, people see raptors as these scary things which shouldn't be trusted around anyone who isn't your mortal enemy. InGen's supposed to be supporting and backing up police forces. What do you think people will say when a raptor tears apart some kid who decided that he wanted to make some noise outside of their cellphones? No one wants that. What people want is to see raptors tearing apart the bad guys like al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That's why you, Pardew Protection, will introduce the battle raptors to the rest of the world. Of course, you'll have to say that the raptors came courtesy of InGen, and questions will inevitably come up because of that particular connection, but let me worry about that."

"Well, that's all well and good and all but how in the world are you going to come up with the raptors?" Pardew asked. "And don't tell me you can just whip up a batch of them because isn't Jurassic World's stock of animals monitored very closely to watch for possible escapes?"

"Well, since you told me not to tell you, I'm not going to tell you," Hoskins replied with a toothy and knowing grin. "Look, Rich, don't worry about it. I know a guy who creates dinosaurs for a living and I know a place where he can make his dinosaurs without anyone else knowing that he made them for us."

Richard Pardew didn't know what came over him at that moment but he accepted the deal with Hoskins without trying to know more about what the deal really entailed other than the fact that Pardew Protection would be the company to introduce the concept of using dinosaurs, specifically velociraptors, in battle. A few months after their encounter in Egypt, Hoskins had introduced Pardew to his contact within Jurassic World who could create the dinosaurs without the management of J-World knowing about it, and it turned out to be none other than Henry Wu himself, chief geneticist of Jurassic World. Wu was a firm believer of the statement that "the idle mind is the devil's playground," and he had been looking for opportunities to push the envelope even further with regards to creating what he referred to as "tailor-made organisms," dinosaurs and other creatures, both living and extinct, which he could genetically manipulate to suit the desires and wishes of anyone and everyone. So far, all he had managed to create were organisms from his own imagination such as a snake with two heads and an anatomically-correct dinosaur, but he hoped to be able to one day offer this kind of service to people who wanted to own a unique designer creature. Of course, genetics was an expensive business and therefore he intended to charge highly for his services but so far, there had been no takers, which was understandable, as Wu hadn't actually declared his desire to do so just yet. But he knew that his own talent was going to waste while Jurassic World produced dinosaurs as from an assembly line for the consumption of the public.

Then came Project Pavlov, a top-secret genetics project funded and masterminded by InGen to create a tame, domesticated, or at least trainable velociraptor. Wu's breakthrough for this project was to insert dog genes related to domesticity into raptor embryos, but far from creating an actual tame raptor, the results of Project Pavlov succeeded only in creating an organism which was, in Wu's own words, "a little bit more compliant and cooperative than the average raptor but in no way tamed or domesticated at all." Nevertheless, the groundwork for raptors which were easier to work with than earlier versions had been laid down, and the seeds of an idea had been planted.

InGen Security had long wanted to be able to finally use dinosaurs in combat but after one of their drones blew up an entire wedding in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a, the Masrani Group (the conglomerate now holding the majority of the stock of InGen) had decided that it was finally time for their company to retreat from the public eye once again. All commitments made prior to this decision would still be upheld, but after that, InGen would now only accept low-visibility jobs. And since deploying raptors in low-key peacekeeping operations would be a public relations nightmare no matter which way one looked at it, Wu and Hoskins needed someone else to market their "battle raptors," and that someone would turn out to be Richard Pardew and Pardew Protection.

That was two years ago. Hoskins and Wu had kept Pardew updated on the progress and growth of the six raptors which would be turned over to Pardew Protection once they had reached a sufficient level of training and maturity and, in those two years, it had seemed like a particularly smart piece of business, and Richard Pardew felt happy with himself for having accepted the deal as it was. And then the Second Isla Nublar Incident happened.

Only a day had passed since the beginning of the incident but the speed and spread of social media had allowed Richard Pardew to gather and know a few things about what happened during the Second Nublar Incident. It started when another Jurassic World genetic experiment, dubbed the _Indominus rex_ , escaped from its enclosure and wreaked havoc with the rest of J-World's animals as well as evading J-World and InGen retrieval teams sent to first bring it back in and then put it down when it was apparent that a live _Indominus_ was not worth the risk. There was also grainy footage of a battle happening between the _Indominus_ , a _Tyrannosaurus_ , and a pack of _Velociraptors_ , although the battle ended with the _Mosasaurus_ killing the _Indominus_ by swallowing it whole. Even though it actually happened, Richard Pardew felt that the _Mosasaurus_ killing the _Indominus_ was kind of anticlimactic, almost a real-life deus ex machina.

But the Second Nublar Incident was actually at the root of Richard Pardew's current problems. The _Indominus_ ' rampage had killed a lot of Jurassic World's animals. Luckily for J-World, they had another entire island dedicated solely to replenishing their stock in the event of something like Nublar Two. Unluckily for Pardew, Wu, and Hoskins, that island was Isla Sorna, "Site B," the place where Hoskins had told Pardew that Wu could create his dinosaurs without someone looking over his shoulder.

It was close to midnight over in Jurassic World, quite possibly right in the middle of the battle between the _T. rex_ and the _I. rex_ when Wu had made a call to Pardew from an InGen helicopter. "Richard, have you heard the news?" Wu had asked without preamble.

"If you're talking about the debacle currently happening on your little island, Henry, then yes, I've not only heard the news, I've seen them," Pardew replied. "I'd say that's bad news for you."

"This is no laughing matter, Richard, so don't treat it as lightly as you're doing now!" Wu had said in an uncharacteristically angry tone. "This isn't just my problem now, you know; it's your problem as well now!"

That had immediately wiped the grin on Pardew's face. "What do you mean by that, Henry?" he asked, more seriously this time.

"That _Indominus rex_ killed a lot of our animals in Jurassic World and now the park has to replenish the stock from Isla Sorna," Wu replied. "That's where our raptors are, in case you've forgotten. Let me tell you something about Site B, Richard. It's not there just as a place where idle geneticists like me can fiddle around creating orgs to our hearts' desires. Site B exists mainly as a place where Jurassic World can keep a reserve stock of animals to replenish the stock on Nublar in case of a large-scale casualty event like the _Indominus_ ' escaping and killing a lot of our animals off. So far, I've managed to fudge up the records and hide our raptors from the eyes of the accountants, but once they put boots on the ground in Sorna then they're going to find out about those raptors and they're going to find out about our little Operation Genesis thing."

"Why exactly are you telling me this, Henry?" Pardew asked. "It doesn't sound like you're just trying to keep me up to date."

"I want you, no, I need you to get your raptors, our raptors, off of Sorna before the J-World people arrive to round up their own animals," Wu told Pardew. "You may think that six extra raptors isn't going to make that much of a difference in the final count, but for me and for these people, six raptors more than had been accounted for means that there will be hell for me to pay when they confront me about it."

"Why are you talking as if you're facing this alone? What happened to Hoskins?"

"Some of his people told me that Vic was last seen inside the Visitor Center just before raptors got into the place. We have to assume that he's dead. That leaves only you and me to face the wrath of Jurassic World when they get wind of our battle raptors."

The good news was that Pardew Protection already had two teams in place in Costa Rica to help train and augment the local police for their coming elections so it was just a matter of ordering his teams down to Isla Sorna to round up the raptors before the J-World people arrived (by sheer dumb luck, the ship accompanying the Pardew Protection teams was the _Jewel of Esfahan_ , the only vessel in Pardew Protection's lists which was equipped with the special pens that Vic Hoskins had designed for the specific purpose of holding and transporting velociraptors). The bad news was that Richard Pardew had just found out that his children, Matt and Irene, had apparently taken one of the family's private jets and gone on some sort of joyride and now they had crashed the plane right on Isla Sorna. Richard Pardew wouldn't call what was happening karma just yet, but he had to admit that his bad luck was beginning to pile up ever since a genetically-created hybrid organism escaped its holding pen on an island thousands of miles away from north London.

Richard Pardew was right now standing in his office on the top floor of the Pardew Building, the skyscraper which was the new headquarters of Pardew Consumer Services and Protection Applications Limited. He looked at his watch and calculated that it was probably dusk or even probably sundown now over at Isla Sorna. Pardew walked over to his desk, pulled out a drawer and took from it a satellite phone made secure with Pardew Protection's own encryption technology. He punched in a number and waited for the connection to come through. "Katsouranis," the person at the other end said as he answered the call.

"Giannis, Richard," Pardew said by way of introduction. "How goes the retrieval operations?"

"Um, ah, well, Richard, uh," Giannis Katsouranis stuttered, "we've, uh… we've hit a few roadblocks and made a few stumbles."

"Care to explain about that? Did you get the raptor expert that Henry recommended, that Owen Grady guy?"

"That's just the tip of the iceberg of our stumbles, boss," Katsouranis replied. "We got Grady, all right, but we were forced to pick up his friend as well. You know, Dearing, the ops director of J-World?"

"Why would you do that, Gian? I thought my orders were clear: grab Grady no matter what. Why did you have to get Dearing as well?"

"See, boss, that's the thing. Grady and Dearing were together when we came to pick Grady up, so we had to take Dearing along for the ride. Dearing would have said something about Grady going with us if we left her behind so we had to take her as well."

"All right, Gian, fine. As long as none of them speak about this whole thing… That's a bridge we'll cross when we get to it. How about the retrievals themselves? How did they go?"

"Not very well, either. We sort of had to trick Grady into coming with us by opening with the crash of your kids' jet. I had the feeling that neither Grady nor Dearing were really keen to go to Sorna but we had to do it. And that didn't end well for any of us. While we were examining the crash site, we got jumped by packs of dinosaurs. You know, the ones that spit venom, what were they called? _Dilophosaurus_ or something like it. And then there were these huge raptors, giant raptors, I think Grady called them _Gigantoraptor_ or something like it as well. We lost six people there, Richard, and Dick Hamada's mortally wounded. Borthwick and Adamson patched him up as well as they could but Dick's still fifty-fifty at best. No one has any room to be optimistic here, sir. And we also lost track of Grady and Dearing."

"Goddamn it. All right, then, what about my children? Did you find any signs of them?"

"Grady did say that he thinks at least one or both of them may have gotten away from the crash site but we were unable to go any further because that was when we were attacked," the Greek replied.

Pardew let out a long and deep sigh as he rubbed his face with his right hand. He then turned back to his phone and asked, "What about our raptors, Gian? Surely we've made progress with that."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you once again, Richard," Katsouranis said, "but as it's already sundown here on Sorna, I've decided not to risk my teams and I've called them back to the _Jewel_. I hope you'll understand why I made this call, sir."

"No, no, Giannis, I understand completely," Pardew assured his chief of operations. He then sighed again as he pinched the bridge of his nose and then ran a hand through his mane of snow-white hair. "This has seriously messed up the plan, Gian," Pardew finally said after a few moments. "This was never supposed to happen like this. All we were supposed to do was to get our raptors off of that island before the Jurassic World people came and counted their stocks. What we were supposed to do was to get Owen Grady there and calm down our raptors enough so that we can finally catch them and get them out of there. But what happened is that we were also forced to take along Claire bloody Dearing, the bloody operations manager of Jurassic World just because she was with Grady when we came to talk him into doing this job for us and she would certainly make some noise about what he's supposed to do and why we took him. And add to that the fact that my own children—my own children, Giannis!—has decided to pick this very day to finally screw up their father's work, and now we're having to divert resources from the retrieval to get back Irene and Matthew safe and sound. Bloody hell! Is Henry there with you? Let me talk to him."

Over on the _Jewel of Esfahan_ just off the coast of Sorna, Giannis Katsouranis handed over his satellite phone to Henry Wu. "He wants to talk to you," Katsouranis said by way of explanation. Wu took the phone and said, "Yes, Richard, what is it?"

"I'm not going to ask you about the non-venomous _Dilophosaurus_ and the gigantic raptors," Pardew said. "I know that you wouldn't be able to tell me about them even if you wanted to, so, Henry, just tell me this: how much longer do we have before Jurassic World finally arrives there to round up _their_ dinosaurs?"

"I don't know, really," Wu replied. "We might still have a window of between 24 to 72 hours but J-World's people could already be on their way here from San Jose as we speak. I know that you don't want to risk your people by trying to retrieve the raptors at night but remember that time is always of the essence here, Richard. You got that?"

"Yes, yes, I got it," Pardew said a little impatiently, nodding his head furiously even as he knew that Wu couldn't see him. "Now give the phone back to Gian, please," he said. Wu immediately obliged. "Nothing has changed, Gian," Pardew told his Greek head of operations. "Our primary focus is still the retrieval of our raptors from that island, but make sure that you set aside people and assets to look for Grady and his girlfriend Dearing. Not only do we need them to get our raptors to calm down but someone will also notice that the Raptor Whisperer and the OM of Jurassic World are missing. And we don't need that kind of attention on us at all."

"Yes, boss," Katsouranis said. "Anything else, sir?"

"That is all," Pardew said, and then he ended the connection.


End file.
